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His rings of black hair flaring to a fierce uprightness.” — Page 158. 


The Story of Tonty 



MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD 

1 1 


ILLUSTRATED BY ENOCH tVARD 


, ;$>i)ctb edition 

WITH NEW INTRODUCTION BY 
THE AUTHOR 



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CHICAGO 

A. C. McCLURG & CO. 


1901 



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Two 0«>^E8 ReceivEO 

DEC. 20 1901 

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Copyright 

By a. C. McClurg & Co. 

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CONTENTS 


Page 

Introduction ^ 

Foreword to the sixth editon 7 

Book I. 

A MONTREAL BEAVER FAIR. 

I. Frontenac II 

II. HAND-OF-IrON 20 

III. Father Hennepin 28 

IV. A Council 39 

V. Sainte Je;anne 48 

VI. The Prophecy of Jolycceur .... 57 

Book II. 

FORT FRONTENAC. 

I. Rival Masters 71 

II. A Travelled Friar 81 

III. Heaven and Earth 87 

IV. A Canoe from the Illinois .... 96 

V. Father Hennepin’s Chapel 109 

VI. La Salle and Tonty 118 


2 


CONTENTS. 


Page 

VII. An Adoption 128 

VIII. Tegahkouita 136 

IX. An Ordeal 146 

X. Hemlock ‘ . . . . 155 

Boob III. 

FORT ST. LOUIS OF THE ILLINOIS. 

I. In AN Eagle’s Nest 165 

II. The Friend and Brother 174 

III. Half-Silence 186 

IV. A Fete on the Rock 198 

V. The Undespairing Norman 218 

VI. To-Day 222 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 


Page 


His rings of black hair flaring to a fierce uprightness 

Frontispiece 


The Indian made some mocking gestures 25 

“ Monsieur,” spoke Tonty, “ if you are a gentleman you 

shall answer to me ” . 32 

Each red orator rose in his turn and spoke his tribe’s 

reply 40 

Her eyes rested on him 51 

The beaver fair was enlivened by music and tricksy 

gambols 60 

An oflicer appeared beside the sentinel 72 

“You see Father Hennepin” 82 

Stripping a coverlet from her berth 99 

He approached in 

“ Tonty, if you could be commandant of every fort I 

build” 124 

“ Why does my brother bring me these things ? ” . . . 132 

“Come here, you Jolycoeur,” called LaSalle 138 

She twisted her hands in tense knots against her neck . 152 

Jolycoeur a prisoner 155 

The eagle’s nest 165 

“Joutel, what are you writing there?” 




/ 


4 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 


Page 

She saw an Indian creeping ’ . . . 178 

“And he was well?” 191 

“ I have a proposal for you, my child ” 201 

Tonty spread it open on his gauntlet 21 1 

It was La Salle 219 


yj 


INTRODUCTION. 


man can see all of a mountain at once. 

He sees its differing sides. Moreover, it 
has rainy and bright day aspects, and summer 
and winter faces. 

The romancer is covered with the dust of 
old books, modern books, great books, and out 
of them all brings in a condensing hand these 
pictures of two men whose lives were as large 
as this continent. 

La Salle is a definite figure in the popular 
mind. But La Salle’s greater friend is known 
only to historians and students. To me the 
finest fact in the Norman explorer’s career is 
the devotion he commanded in Henri de Tonty. 
No stupid dreamer, no ruffian at heart, no be- 


6 


IN TROD UCTION. 


trayer of friendship, no mere blundering woods- 
man — as La Salle has been outlined by his 
enemies — could have bound to himself a man 
like Tonty. The love of this friend and the 
words this friend has left on record thus honor 
La Salle, And we who like courage and stead- 
fastness and gentle courtesy in men owe much 
honor which has never been paid to Henri de 
Tonty. 


Mary Hartwell Catherwood. 


FOREWORD 


TO THE SIXTH EDITION. 


A STATUE of Robert Cavelier de la Salle, 
given by Judge Lambert Tree to the City 
of Chicago, stands in Lincoln Park, in that me- 
tropolis. During strenuous days of the past 
winter the writer of this book went every morn- 
ing to look at the stern bronze face set south- 
ward. Faith sometimes fails us; and she said 
to herself : 

“ What is the use of trying to make the past 
live again? Does this generation care anything 
about vanished strength spent in the development 
of the country it enjoys ? I greet you, Sieur 
de la Salle. But among the millions who have 
crowded on your footsteps, what other notices 
or thinks of you ? ” 

Behold, that very moment, a horseman reined 
in, and gazed at the figure as he moved by. Then 
some children gathered at the base, and studied 
the name. Afterwards a group of women did 


8 


FOREWORD, 


him at least the homage of curiosity. A wheel- 
man, like a swallow, darted across the open 
space, and seeing, was obliged to remember. So 
a dozen, a score, fifty — which later hours of the 
day perhaps multiplied to hundreds — passed, 
and learned the ever-present lesson. 

Our people do not forget. They are learning 
to remember. Whether history is the fashion 
or not the fashion, the people — in the stress and 
rush of living — are truly harking back more and 
more to their past, for a deeper comprehension 
of their present. 

Mary Hartwell Catherwood. 


November i, 1901. 


25ooh I. 

A MONTREAL BEAVER FAIR. 

1678 A. D. 





t 



THE STORY OF TONTY. 


I. 


FRONTENAC. 


LONG the entire river front of Montreal 



^ camp-fires faded as the amphitheatre of 
night gradually dissolved around them. 

Canoes lay beached in one long row as if a 
shoal of huge fish had come to land. The 
lodges made a new street along Montreal wharf. 
Oblong figures of Indian women moved from 
shadow to shine, and children stole out to 
caper beside kettles where they could see their 
breakfasts steaming. Here and there light fell 
upon a tranquil mummy less than a metre in 
length, standing propped against a lodge side, 
and blinking stoical eyes 'in its brown flat face as 
only a bark-encased Indian baby could blink; 
or it slept undisturbed by the noise of the 
awakening camp, looking a mummy indeed. 


12 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


The savage of the New World carried his 
family with him on every peaceable journey; 
sometimes to starve for weeks when the winter 
hunting proved bad. It was only when he 
went to war that he denied himself all squaw 
service. 

The annual beaver fair was usually held in 
midsummer, but this year the tribes of the 
upper lakes had not descended with their furs 
to Montreal until September. These precious 
skins, taken out of the canoes, were stored 
within the lodges. 

Every male of the camp was already greas- 
ing, painting, and feathering himself for the grand 
council, which always preceded a beaver fair. 
Hurons, Ottawas, Crees, Nipissings, Ojibwas, 
Pottawatamies, each jealous for his tribe, com- 
pleted a process begun the night before, and 
put on what might be called his court dress. 
In some cases this was no dress at all, ex- 
cept a suit of tattooing, or a fine coat of ochre 
streaked with white clay or soot. The juice of 
berries heightened nature in their faces. But 
there were grand barbarians who laid ou-t robes 
of beaver skin, ample, and marked inside with 
strange figures or porcupine quill embroidery. 


FI^ONTENAC. 


13 


The heads swarming in this vast and dusky 
dressing-room were some of them shaven bare 
except the scalp lock, some bristling in a 
ridge across the top, while others carried the 
natural coarse growth tightly braided down 
one side, with the opposite half flowing loose. 

Montreal behind its palisades made a dim 
background to all this early illumination, — few 
domestic candles shining through windows or 
glancing about the H6tel Dieu as the nuns 
began their morning devotions. Mount Royal 
now flickered a high shadow, and now massed 
inertly against stars; but the river, breathing 
forever like some colossal creature, reflected all 
the camp-fires in its moving scales. 

The guns of the fort had fired a salute to 
Indian guests on their arrival the evening be- 
fore. But at sunrise repeated cannonading, a 
prolonged roll of drums, and rounds of mus- 
ketry announced that the governor-general’s 
fleet was in sight. 

Montreal flocked to the wharf where already 
the savages were arrayed in solemn ranks. 
Marching out of the fortress with martial mu- 
sic, past the H6tel Dieu to the landing-place 
where Frontenac must step from his boat, came 


14 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


the remnant of the Carignan regiment. Even 
the Sulpitian brotherhood, whose rights as seign- 
iors of Montreal island this governor had at 
one time slighted, appeared to do him honor. 
And gentle nuns of St Joseph were seen in 
the general outpour of inhabitants. 

This governor-general, with all his faults, 
had a large and manly way of meeting colo- 
nial dangers, and was always a prop under the 
fainting heart of New France. 

His boats made that display upon the St. 
Lawrence which it was his policy and inclina- 
tion to make before Indians. Officers in white 
and gold, and young nobles of France, pow- 
dered, and flashing in the colors of Louis’ 
magnificent reign, crowded his own vessel, — 
young men who had ventured out to Quebec 
because it was the fashion at court to be 
skilled in colonial matters, and now followed 
Frontenac as far as Montreal to amuse them- 
selves with the annual beaver fair. The flag of 
France, set with its lily-like symbol, waved over 
their heads its white reply to its twin signal on 
the fort. 

Frontenac stood at the boat’s prow, his rich 
cloak thrown back, and his head bared to the 


FRONTENAC. 


15 


morning river breath and the people’s shouts. 
Being colonial king pleased this soldier, tired of 
European camps and the full blaze of royalty, 
where his poverty put him to the disadvantage 
of a singed moth. 

He came blandly gliding to the wharf, Louis 
de Buade, Count of Frontenac, and Baron of 
Palluau, and the only governor of New France 
who ever handled the arrogant Five Nations of 
the Iroquois like a strong father,^ — a man 
who would champion the rights of his meanest 
colonist, and at the same time quarrel with his 
lieutenant in power to his last breath. 

Merchants of Quebec followed him with 
boat-loads of Indian supplies. Even Acadia 
had sent men to this voyage, for the Baron 
de Saint-Castin appeared in the fleet, with 
his young Indian Baroness. It is told of 
Saint-Castin that he had kept a harem in his 
sylvan principality of Pentegoet; but being a 
man of conscience, he confessed and reformed. 
It is also told of him that he never kept a 
harem or otherwise lapsed into the barba- 

^ Frontenac was the only man the Iroquois would ever allow 
to call himself their father. All other governors, English or 
French, were simply brothers. 


1 6 THE STORY OF TONTY. 

risms of the Penobscots, among whom he car- 
ried missionaries and over whom he was a 
great lord. Type of the Frenchman of his 
day, he came to New France a lad in the Carig- 
nan regiment, amassed fortunes in the fur trade, 
and holding his own important place in the 
colony, goaded like a thorn the rival colony 
of New England along his borders. 

But most conspicuous to the eyes of Montreal 
were two men standing at Frontenac’s right hand, 
a Norman and an Italian. Both were tall, the 
Italian being of deeper colors and more gener- 
ous materials. His large features were clothed 
in warm brown skin. Rings of black hair thick 
as a fleece were cut short above his military 
collar. His fearless, kindly eyes received im- 
pressions from every aspect of the New World. 
There dwelt in Henri de Tonty the power to 
make men love him at sight, — savages as well 
as Europeans. He wore the dress of a French 
lieutenant of infantry, and looked less than 
thirty years old, having entered the service 
of France in his early youth. 

The other man, Robert Cavelier, — called 
La Salle from an estate he had once owned in 
France, — explorer, and seignior of Fort Fron- 


FRONTENAC. 


7 


tenac and adjacent grants on the north shore 
of Lake Ontario, was at that time in the prime 
of his power. He was returning from France, 
with the king’s permission to work out all his 
gigantic enterprises, with funds for the purpose, 
and one of the most promising young military 
men in Europe as his lieutenant. 

Montreal merchants on the wharf singled out 
La Salle with jealous eye, which saw in the 
drooping point and flaring base of his nose an 
endless smile of scorn. He was a man who 
had only to use his monopolies to become enor- 
mously rich, cutting off the trade of the lakes 
from Montreal. That he was above gain, ex- 
cept as he could use it for hewing his ambi- 
tious road into the wilderness, they did not 
believe. The merchants of Montreal readily 
translated the shyness and self-restraint of his 
solitary nature into the arrogance of a recently 
ennobled and successful man. 

La Salle had a spare face, with long oval 
cheeks, curving well inward beside the round of 
his sensitive prominent chin. Gray and olive 
tones still further cooled the natural pallor of 
his skin and made ashen brown the hair which 
he wore flowing. 


a 


1 8 THE STORY OF TONTY 

The plainness of an explorer and the elegance 
of a man exact in all his habits distinguished 
La Salle’s dress against that background of 
brilliant courtiers. 

He moved ashore with Frontenac, who saluted 
benignly both the array of red allies and the 
inhabitants of this second town in the province. 

The sub-governor stepped out to escort the 
governor-general to the fort, bells rang, cannon 
still boomed, martial music pierced the heart 
with its thrill, and the Carignan squad wheeled 
in behind Frontenac’s moving train. 

** Sieur de la Salle ! Sieur de la Salle ! ” a little 
girl called, breaking away from the Sisters of 
St. Joseph, whose convent robes had enclosed 
her like palisades, “ take me also in the pro- 
cession ! ” 

This demand granted itself, so nimbly did she 
escape a nun’s ineffectual grasp and spring be- 
tween Tonty and La Salle. 

Frontenac himself had turned at the shrill 
outcry. He laughed when he saw the wilful 
young creature taking the explorer by the wrist 
and falling into step so close to his own person. 

A pursuing nun, unwilling to interrupt the 
governor’s train, hovered along its progress, 


FRONTENAC. 


19 


making anxious signs to her charge, until she 
received an assuring gesture from La Salle. 
She then went back dissatisfied but relieved of 
responsibility; and the child, with a proud fling 
of her person, marched on toward the fort. 


II. 

HAND-OF-IRON. 

ADEMOISELLE the tiger-cat,” said 



La Salle to Tonty, making himself 
heard with some effort above the din of martial 
sound. 

The young soldier lifted his hat with his left 
hand and made the child a bow, which she 
regarded with critical eyes. 

“ I am the niece of Monsieur de la Salle,” 
she explained to Tonty as she marched; “so he 
calls me tiger-cat.” 

“ Mademoiselle Barbe Cavelier is the tiger- 
cat’s human name,” the explorer added, laugh- 
ing. “ It is flattering to have this nimble animal 
spring affectionately on one from ambush; but 
I should soon have inquired after you at the 
convent, mademoiselle.” 

“ I did not spring affectionately on you,” said 
Barbe ; “ I wanted to be in the procession.” 


HAISfD-OF-IROJSf. 


21 


“ Hast thou then lost all regard for thy uncle 
La Salle during his year of absence?” 

Barbe’s high childish voice distinctly and sin- 
cerely stated, “No, monsieur; I have fought all 
the girls at the convent on your account. Jeanne 
le Ber said nothing against you ; but she is a 
Le Ber. I am glad you came back in such 
grandeur. I was determined to be in the gran- 
deur myself. But it is not a time to give you 
my cheek for a kiss.” 

La Salle smiled over her head at Tonty. The 
Italian noted her marked resemblance to the 
explorer. She had the same features in deli- 
cate tints, the darkness of her eyelashes and 
curls only emphasizing the type. Already her 
small nose drooped at the point and flared at 
the base. As La Salle and his young kins- 
woman stepped together, Tonty gauged them 
alike, — two self-restraining natures with un- 
measured endurance and individual force like 
the electric current. 

Montreal’s square bastioned fort, by the 
mouth of a small creek flowing into the St. 
Lawrence, was soon reached from the wharf. 
It stood at the south end of the town. 

“ My dear child,” said La Salle, stating his 


22 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


case to Barbe, “ it is necessary for me to go 
into the fort with Count Frontenac, and equally 
necessary you should go back at once to the 
Sisters. I will bring you out of the convent 
to-morrow to look at the beaver fair. This is 
Monsieur de Tonty, my lieutenant; let him take 
you back to the nuns. I shall be blamed if I 
carry you into the fort.” 

Barbe heard him without raising objections. 
She looked at Tonty, who gave her his left hand 
and drew her out of the train. 

It swept past them into the fortress gates, — 
gallant music, faces returning her eager gaze 
with smiles, plumes, powdered curls, and laces, 
gold and white uniforms, soldiers with the sun 
flashing from their gun-barrels. 

Barbe watched the last man in. To express 
her satisfaction she then rose to the tip of one 
foot and hopped three steps. She was lightly 
and delicately made, and as full of restless grace 
as a bird. Her face and curls bloomed above 
and strongly contrasted with the raiment her 
convent guardians planned for a child dependent, 
not on their charity, but on their maternal care. 

The September morning enveloped the world 
in a haze of brightness, like that perfecting blue 


HAND-OF-IRON. 


23 


breath which we call the bloom upon the grape. 
A great landscape with a scarf of melting azure 
resting around its horizon, or ravelling to shreds 
against the mountain’s breast, or pretending to 
be wood-smoke across the river, drew Tonty’s 
eye from the disappearing pageant 

That fair land was a fit spot whereon the 
most luxurious of civilizations should touch and 
affiliate with savages of the wilderness. Up the 
limpid green river the Lachine Rapids showed 
their teeth with audible roar. From that point 
Mount Royal could be seen rising out of mists 
and stretching its hind-quarters westward like 
some vast mastodon. But to Tonty only its 
front appeared, a globe dipped in autumn colors 
and wearing plumes of vapor. The sky of this 
new hemisphere rose in unmeasured heights 
which the eye followed in vain ; there seemed 
no zenith to the swimming blinding azure. 

A row of booths for merchants had been built 
all along the outside of Montreal’s palisades, and 
traders were thus early setting their goods in 
array. 

At the north extremity of the town that huge 
stone windmill built by the seigniors for defence, 
cast a long dewy shadow toward the west. Its 


24 


THE STORY OF TON TV. 


loopholes showed like dark specks on the body 
of masonry. 

Sun-sparkles on the river were no more buoy- 
ant and changeable than the child at Tonty’s 
side. Dimples came and went in her cheeks. 
Her blood was stirred by the swarming life 
around her. 

“ Monsieur,” she confided to her uncle’s lieu- 
tenant, “ I am meditating something very 
wicked.” 

“ Certainly that is impossible, mademoiselle,” 
said Tonty, accommodating his step to her reluc- 
tant gait. 

“ I am meditating on not going back to the 
convent.” 

“ Where would you go, mademoiselle? ” 

“ Everywhere, to see things.” 

“ But my orders are to escort you to the nuns. 
You would disgrace me as a soldier.” 

Barbe lifted her gaze to his face and was 
diverted from rebellion. Tonty put out his 
arm to guard her, but a tall stalking brave was 
pushed against her in passing and immediately 
startled by the thud of her prompt fist upon 
his back. The Indian turned, unsheathing his 
knife. 


HAND-OF-/RON. 


25 


“ Get out of my way, thou ugly big warrior,” 
said Barbe, meeting his eye, which softened from 
fierceness to laughter, and holding her fist ready 
for further encounter. 

The Indian made some mocking gestures and 
menaced her playfully with his thumb. Tonty 



The Indian made some mocking gestures. 


threw his arm across her shoulder and moved 
her on toward the convent. Barbe escaped from 
this touch, an entirely new matter filling her 
mind. 

“ Monsieur, even old Jouaneaux in our Hotel 
Dieu hath not such a heavy hand as thou hast. 
Many a time hath he pulled me down off the 
palisade when I looked over to see the coureurs 


26 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


de bois go roaring by. But thou hast a hand 
like iron ! ” 

Tonty flushed, being not yet hardened to his 
misfortune. 

“ It is a hand of iron. I am called Main-de- 
fer.” 1 

Barbe took hold of it in its glove. Of all the 
people she had ever met Tonty was the only 
person whose touch she did not resent. 

“ The other hand is not like unto it, 
monsieur? ” 

He gave her the other also, and she compared 
their weight. With a roguish lifting of her nos- 
trils she inquired, — 

“ Will every bit of you turn to metal like this 
heavy hand?” 

“Alas, no, mademoiselle; there is no hope of 
that.” 

Tonty stripped his gauntlet off. With half 
afraid fingers she examined the artificial mem- 
ber. It was of copper. 

“Where is the old one, monsieur?” 

“ It was blown off by a grenade at Messina 
last year.” 

^ “ Henri de Tonty, surnomme Main-de-fer.” Notes Sur 
Nouvelle France. 


HAND-OF-IRON. 


27 


“ Does it hurt? ” 

“ Not now. Except when I think of the ser- 
vice of Monsieur de la Salle, and of my being 
thus pieced out as a man.” 

Barbe measured his height and breadth and 
warm-toned face with satisfied eyes. She con- 
soled him. 

“ There is so much of you, monsieur, you can 
easily do without a hand.” 


III. 

FATHER HENNEPIN. 

“ '"T^HOU art a comfort to a soldier, inademoi- 
^ selle,” said Tonty, heartily. 

“ But not to a priest,” observed Barbe. “ P'or 
last birthday when I was eleven my uncle Abbe 
stuck out his lip and said I was eleven years bad. 
But my uncle La Salle kissed my cheek. There 
goeth Francois le Moyne.” Her face became 
suddenly distorted with grimaces of derision be- 
side which Tonty could scarcely keep his gravity. 
A boy of about her own age ran past, dropping 
her a sneer for her pains. 

“ Monsieur, these Le Moynes and Sorels and 
Bouchers and Varennes and Joliets and Le Bers, 
they are all against my uncle La Salle. The 
girls talk about it in the convent. But he hath 
the governor on his side, so what can they do? 
I have pinched Jeanne le Ber at school, but she 
will never pinch back and it only makes her feel 


FATHER HENNEPIN. 


29 


holier. So I pinch her no more. Do you know 
Jeanne le Ber? ” 

“ No,” said Tonty, “ I have not that pleasure.” 

“ Oh, monsieur, it is no pleasure. She says so 
many prayers. When I have prayers for pen- 
ances they make me so tired I have to get up 
and hop between them. But Jeanne le Ber 
would pray all the time if her father did not pull 
her off her knees. My father and mother died 
in France. If they were alive they would not 
have to pull me off my knees.” 

“ But a woman should learn to pray, even as a 
man should learn to fight,” observed Tonty. “ He 
stands between her and danger, and she should 
stand linking him to heaven.” 

“ I can fight for myself,” said Barbe. “ And 
everybody ought to say his own prayers ; but it 
makes one disagreeable to say more than his 
share. I wish to grow up an agreeable person.” 

They had reached the palisade entrance which 
fronted the river, Barbe’s feet still lagging amid 
the lively scenes outside. She allowed Tonty to 
lead her with his left hand, thus sheltering her 
next the booths from streams of passing Indians 
and traders. 

Beside this open gate she would have lingered 


30 


THE STORY OF TON TV. 


indefinitely, chattering to a guardian who felt her 
hatred of convent restraint^ and gazing at pre- 
parations for the council : at prunes and chopped 
pieces of oxen being put to boil for an Indian 
feast; at the governor’s chair from the fortress, 
where the sub-governor lived, borne by men to 
the middle of that space yearly occupied as the 
council ring. But a watchful Sister was hovering 
ready inside the palisade gate, and reaching forth 
her arm she drew her charge away from Tonty, 
giving him brief and scandalized thanks for his 
service. 

Barbe looked back. It was worth Tonty’s 
while to catch sight of that regretful face smeared 
about its warm neck by curls, its lips parted 
to repeat and still repeat, “ Adieu, monsieur. 
Adieu, monsieur.” 

But two men had come between the disappear- 
ing child and him, one man, dressed partly like 
an officer and partly like a coureur de bois, 
throwing both arms around Tonty in the eager 
Latin manner. 

“ My cousin Henri de Tonty, welcome to the 
New World. I waited with my gouty leg at the 
fortress for you ; but when you came not, like a 
good woodsman, I tracked you down.” 


FATHER HENNEPIN. 


31 


“ My cousin Greysolon du Lhut ! Glad am I 
to find you so speedily. This cold and heavy 
hand belies me.” 

“ I heard of this hand. But the other was well 
lost, my cousin. Take courage in beholding me ; 
I had nearly lost a leg, and not by good powder 
and shot either, but with gout which disgrace- 
fully loads up a man with his own dead members. 
But the Iroquois virgin, Catharine Tegahkouita, 
hath interceded for me.” 

“ Monsieur de Tonty will observe we have 
saints among the savages in New France,” said 
the other man. 

He was a Recollet friar with sandalled feet, 
wearing a gray capote of coarse texture which 
was girt with the cord of Saint Francis. His 
peaked hood hung behind his shoulders leaving 
his shaven crown to glisten with rosy enjoyment 
of the sunlight. A crucifix hung at his side; but 
no man ever devoted his life to prayer who was 
so manifestly created to enjoy the world. He 
had a nose of Flemish amplitude depressed in 
the centre, fat lips, a terraced chin, and twinkling 
good-humored eyes. The gray capote could not 
conceal a pompous swell of the stomach and the 
strut of his sandalled feet. 


32 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


“ My cousin Tonty/’ said Du Lhut, “ this is 
Father Louis Hennepin from Fort Frontenac. 
He hath come down to Montreal^ to meet Mon- 
sieur de la Salle and engage himself in the new 
western venture.” 

“ Venture ! ” exclaimed a keen-visaged man in 
the garb of a merchant-colonist who was carrying 
a bale of goods to one of the booths, — for no 
man in Montreal was ashamed to get profit out of 
the beaver fair. Where your Monsieur de la 
Salle is concerned there will be venture enough, 
but no results for any man but La Salle.” 

He set his bale down as if it were a challenge. 

Points of light sprung into Tonty’s eyes and 
the blood in his face showed its quickening. 

Monsieur,” he spoke, “ if you are a gentle- 
man you shall answer to me for slandering 
Monsieur de la Salle.” 

“ Jacques le Ber is a noble of the colony,” 
declared Du Lhut, with the derisive freedom this 
great ranger and leader of coureurs de bois 
assumed toward any one; “ for hath he not pur- 
chased his patent of King Louis for six thousand 
livres? But look you, my cousin Tonty, if the 

1 The romancer here differs from the historian, who says 
Father Hennepin met La Salle at Quebec. 



Monsieur,” spoke Tonty, “ if you are a gentleman you shall answer to me for slandering 

Monsieur de la Salle.” — Page 32. 














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FATHER HENNEPIN. 


35 


king allowed not us colonial nobles to engage in 
trade he would lose us all by starvation ; for 
scarce a miserable censitaire on our lands can 
pay us his capon and pint of wheat at the end of 
the year.” 

“ I will answer to you, monsieur,” said Jacques 
le Ber to the soldier, “ that La Salle is the 
enemy of the colony, and the betrayer of them 
that have been his friends.” 

Father Hennepin and Du Lhut caught Tonty’s 
arms. Du Lhut then dragged him with expos- 
tulations inside the palisade gate, repeating Fron- 
tenac’s strict orders that all quarrels should be 
suppressed during the beaver fair, and as the 
young man’s furious looks still sought the mer- 
chant, reminding him of the harm he might 
do La Salle by an open quarrel with Montreal 
traders. 

“ I, who am not bound to La Salle as close as 
thou art, — I tell you it will not do,” declared 
Du Lhut. 

“ Let the man keep his distance, then ! ” 

“ Why, you hot-blooded fellow ! why do you 
take these Frenchmen so seriously?” 

“ Sieur de la Salle is my friend. I will strike 
any man who denounces him.” 


36 


TJIE STORY OF TONTY. 


“ Oh, come out toward the mountain. Let us 
make a little pilgrimai^e,” laughed Du Lhut. 
“ We must cool thee, I'onty, we must cool 
thee; or La Salle’s enemies will lie in one heap 
the length of - Montreal, mowed by this iron 
hand ! ” 

As Jacques le Ber carried forward his bale. 
Father Pfennepin walked beside him dealing 
forth good-natured remonstrance with fat hands 
and out-turned lips. 

“ My son, God save me from the man who 
doth nurse a grievance. Your case is simply 
this: our governor built a fort at Cataraqui, and 
it is now called Fort Frontenac. He put you 
and associates of yours in charge, and you had 
profit of that fort. Afterward, by his recom- 
mendation to the king, Sieur de la Salle was’ 
made seignior of Fort Frontenac and lands 
thereabout. This hast thou ever since bitterly 
chewed to the poisoning of thy immortal soul.” 

“You churchmen all, — Jesuits, Sulpitians, or 
Recollets, — are over zealous to domineer in 
this colony,” spoke Jacques le Ber, through the 
effort of carrying his bale. 

“ My son,” said Father Hennepin, swelling his 
stomach and inflating his throat, “ why should 


FATHER HENNEPIN. 


37 


I enter the mendicant order of Saint Francis and 
live according to the rules of a pure and severe 
virtue, if I felt no zeal for saving souls?” 

“ I spoke of domineering,” repeated the angry 
merchant. 

” And touching Monsieur de la Salle,” said 
Father Hennepin, “ I exhort thee not to love 
him ; for who could love him, — but to rid thy- 
self of hatred of any one.” 

“ Father Hennepin has not then attached him- 
self to La Salle’s new enterprise?” 

“ I have a grand plan of discovery of my 
own,” said the friar, deeply, rolling his shaven 
head, “ an enterprise which would terrify any- 
body but me. The Sieur de la Salle merely 
opens my path. I will confess to thee, my son, 
that in youth I often hid myself behind the 
doors of taverns, — which were no fit haunts for 
men of holy life, — to hearken unto sailors’ tales 
of strange lands. And thus would 1 willingly 
do without eating or drinking, such burning de- 
sire I had to explore new countries.” 

The Father did not observe that Jacques le 
Ber had reached his own booth and was there 
arranging his goods regardless of explorations 
in strange lands, but walked on, talking to the 


38 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


air, his out-thrust lips rounding every word, until 
some derisive savage pointed out this solo. 

Jacques le Ber made ready to take his place 
in the governor’s council, thinking wrathfully of 
his encounter with Tonty. He dwelt, as we all 
do, upon the affronts and hindrances of the pres- 
ent, rather than on his prospect of founding a 
strong and worthy family in the colony. 


IV. 


A COUNCIL. 

North American savage, with an unerr- 
^ ing instinct which republics might well 
study, sent his wisest men to the front to repre- 
sent him. 

A great circle of Indians, ranged according 
to their tribes, sat around Frontenac when the 
stone windmill trod its noon shadow underfoot. 
Te Deum had been sung in the chapel, and 
thanks offered for his safe arrival. The princi- 
pal men of Montreal, with the governor’s white 
and gold officers, sat now within the circle be- 
hind his chair. 

But Frontenac faced every individual of his 
Indian children, moving before them, their natu- 
ral leader, as he made his address of greeting, 
admonition, and approval, through Du Lhut as 
interpreter. The old courtier loved Indians. 
They appealed to that same element in him 
which the coureurs de bois knew how to reach. 


40 


THE STOKY OF TON TV. 


The Frenchman has a wild strain of blood. He 
takes kindly and easily to the woods. He makes 
himself an appropriate and even graceful figure 
against any wilderness background, and goes 
straight to Nature’s heart, carrying all the refine- 
ments of civilization with him. 

The smoke of the peace pipe went up hour 
after hour. By strictest rules of precedence 
each red orator rose in his turn and spoke his 
tribe’s reply to Onontiod An Indian never hur- 
ried eloquence. The sun might tip toward 
Mount Royal, and the steam of his own deferred 
feast reach his nose in delicious suggestion. He 
had to raise the breeze of prosperity, to clear 
the sun, to wipe away tears for friends slain dur- 
ing past misunderstandings with Onontio’s other 
children, and to open the path of peace between 
their lodges and the lodges of his tribe. Ottawa, 
Huron, Cree, Nipissing, Ojibwa, or Pottawatamie, 
it was necessary for him to bury the hatchet in 
pantomime, to build a great council-fire whose 

^ “This name was in Huron and Iroquois the translation of 
the name of M. de Montmagny (Mons magnus, great mountain). 
The savages continued calling the successors of Governor Mont- 
magny by the same name, and even to the French king they 
applied the title ‘ Great Ononthio.’ ” Translated from note on 
page 138, tome i, Garneau’s Histoire du Canada. 



Each red orator rose in his turn and spoke his tribe^s reply.” — Page 40. 






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A COUNCIL. 


43 


smoke should rise to heaven in view of all the 
nations, and gather the tribes of the lakes in one 
family council with the French around this fire 
forever. 

Children played along the river’s brink, and 
squaws kept fire under the kettles. A few men 
guarded the booths along the palisades from pil- 
ferers, though scarce a possible pilferer roamed 
from the centre of interest. 

Crowds of spectators pressed around the great 
circle; traders who had brought packs of skins 
skilfully intercepted by them at some station 
above Montreal ; interpreters, hired by mer- 
chants to serve them during the fair; coureurs 
de bois stretching up their neck sinews until 
these knotted with intense and prolonged effort. 
In this standing wall the habitant was crowded 
by converted Iroquois from the Mountain mis- 
sion, v/ho, having learned their rights as Chris- 
tians, yielded no inch of room. 

The sun descended out of sight behind Mount 
Royal, though his presence lingered with sky 
and river in abundant crimsons. Still the smoke 
of the peace pipe rose above the council ring, 
and eloquence rolled its periods on. That misty 
scarf around the horizon, which high noon drove 


44 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


out of sight, floated into view again, becoming 
denser and denser. The pipings of out-door in- 
sects came sharpened through twilight, and all 
the camp-fires were deepening their hue, before 
a solemn uprising of Frenchmen and Indians 
proclaimed the council over. 

La Salle had sat through it at the governor’s 
right hand, watching those bronze faces and 
restless eyes with sympathy as great as Fron- 
tenac’s. He, also, was a lord of the wilderness. 
He could more easily open his shy nature to 
such red brethren and eloquently command, de- 
nounce, or persuade them, than stand before 
dames and speak one word, — which he was 
forced to attempt when candles were lighted in 
the candelabra of the fort. 

There was not such pageantry at Montreal as 
in the more courtly society of Quebec. The 
appearance of the governor with his train of 
young nobles drew out those gentler inhabitants 
who took no part in the bartering of the beaver 
fair. 

Perrot, the sub-governor, had known his pe- 
riod of bitter disagreement with Frontenac. 
Having made peace with a superior he once 
defied, he was anxious to pay Frontenac every 


A COUNCIL. 


45 


honor, and the two governors were united in 
their policy of amusing and keeping busy so 
varied an assemblage as that which thronged the 
beaver fair. Festivity as grand as colonial cir- 
cumstances permitted was therefore held in the 
governor’s apartments. The guarded fortress 
gates stood open ; torches burned within the 
walls, and blanketed savages stalked in and out. 

Yet that colonial drawing-room lacked the 
rude elements which go to making most pioneer 
societies. Human intercourse in frontier towns 
exposed to danger and hardship, though it may 
be hearty and innocent, is rarely graceful. 

But here was a small Versailles transplanted 
to the wilderness. Fragments of a great court 
met Indian-wedded nobles and women with gen- 
erations of good ancestors behind them. Here 
were even the fashions of the times in gowns, 
and the youths of Louis’ salon bowed and paid 
compliments to powdered locks. These French 
colonial nobles were poor; but with pioneer in- 
stinct they decorated themselves with the best 
garment^ their scanty money would buy. Here 
thronged Dumays, Le Moynes, Mousniers, Des- 
roches, Fleurys, Baudrys, Migeons, Vigers, Gau- 
tiers, all chattering and animated. Here stood 


^6 THE STORY OF TONTY. 

the Baroness de Saint-Castin like a statue of 
bronze. Here were those illustrious Le Moynes, 
father and sons, whose deeds may be traced in 
our day from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of 
Mexico. Here Frontenac, with the graciously 
winning manner which belonged to his pleasant 
hours, drew to himself and soothed disaffected 
magnates of his colonial kingdom. 

All these figures, and the spectacles swarm- 
ing around the beaver fair, like combinations 
in a kaleidoscope to be seen once and seen no 
more, gave Tonty such condensed knowledge 
of the New World as no ordinary days could 
offer. 

La Salle alone, though fresh from audiences 
at court and distinguished by royal favor, stood 
abashed and annoyed by the part he must play 
toward civilized people. 

“ Look at the Sieur de la Salle,” observed 
Du Lhut to Tonty. “ There is a man who 
stands and fights off the approach of every other 
creature.” 

“ There never was a man better formed for 
friendship,” retorted Tonty. “ Touching his 
reserve, I call that no blemish, though he has 
said of it himself, it is a defect he can never be 


A COUNCIL, 


47 


rid of as long as he lives, and often it spites him 
against himself.” 

La Salle turned his shoulder on these associ- 
ates, uneasily conscious that his weakness was 
observed,, and put many moving figures between 
himself and them. He had the free gait of a 
woodsman tempered by the air of a courtier. 
More than one Montreal girl accusing gold- 
embroidered young soldiers of finding the Que- 
bec women charming, turned her eyes to follow 
La Salle. Possible lord of the vast and unknown 
west, in the flower of his years, he was next to 
Frontenac the most considerable figure in the 
colony. 

Severe study in early youth and ambition in 
early manhood had crowded the lover out of 
La Salle. His practical gaze was oppressed by 
so many dames. It dwelt upon the floor, until, 
travelling accidentally to a corner, it rose and 
encountered Jacques le Ber’s daughter sitting 
beside her mother. 


V. 


SAINTE JEANNE. 

TT7HEN La Salle was seignior of Lachine, 
^ ^ before the king and Frontenac helped his 
ambition to its present foothold, he had been in 
the habit of stopping at Jacques le Ber’s house 
when he came to Montreal. 

The first day of the beaver fair greatly tasked 
Madame le Ber. She sat drowsily beside the 
eldest child of her large absent flock, and was not 
displeased to have her husband’s distinguished 
enemy approach Jeanne. 

The wife of Le Ber had been called madame 
since her husband bought his patent of nobility; 
but she held no strict right to the title, even 
wives of the lesser nobles being then addressed 
as demoiselles. In that simple colonial life 
Jacques le Ber, or his wife in his absence, served 
goods to customers over his own counter. Ma- 
dame le Ber was an excellent woman, who said 
her prayers and approached the sacraments at 


SAIJVTE JEANNE. 


49 


proper seasons. She had abundant flesh cov- 
ered with dark red skin, and she often pondered 
why a spirit of a daughter with passionate long- 
ings after heaven had been sent to her. If Sieur 
de la Salle could draw the child’s mind from 
extreme devotion, her husband must feel in- 
debted to him. 

La Salle’s face relaxed and softened as he sat 
down beside this sixteen-year-old maid in her 
colonial gown. She held her crucifix in her 
hands, and waited for him to talk. Jeanne made 
melody of his silences. As a child she had 
never rubbed against him for caresses, but looked 
into his eyes with sincere meditation. Having 
no idea of the explorer’s aim, Jeanne le Ber was 
yet in harmony with him across their separating 
years. She also could stake her life on one su- 
preme idea. La Salle was formed to subdue the 
wilderness ; she was dimly and ignorantly, but 
with her childish might, undertaking that stranger 
region, the human soul. She looked younger 
than other girls of her age; yet La Salle was 
moved to say, using the name he had given 
her, — 

“You have changed much since last year, 
Sainte Jeanne.” 


4 


50 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


“ Am I worse, Sieur de la Salle ? ” she anx- 
iously inquired. 

“ No. Better. Except I fear you have prayed 
yourself to a greater distance from me.” 

“ I name you in my prayers, Sieur de la 
Salle. Ever since my father ceased to be your 
friend I have asked to have your haughty spirit 
humbled.” 

La Salle laughed. 

“ If you name me at all, Sainte Jeanne, pray 
rather for the humbling of my enemies.” 

“ No, Sieur de la Salle. You need your ene- 
mies. I could ill do without mine.” 

“ Who could be an enemy to thee ? ’ 

“There are many enemies of my soul. One 
is my great, my very great love.” 

La Salle’s face whitened and flushed. He cast 
a quick glance upon the dozing matron, the 
backs of people whose conversation buzzed 
about his ears, and returned to Jeanne’s child- 
like white eyelids and crucifix-folding hands. 

“ Whom do you love, Sainte Jeanne?” 

“I love my father so much, and my mother; 
and the children are too dear to me. Sometimes 
when I rise in the night to pray, and think pf 
living apart from my dear father, the cold sweat 


SA/JVTE JEANNE. 


51 


stands on my forehead. Too many dear peo- 
ple throng between the soul and heaven. Even 
you, Sieur de la Salle, — 1 have to pray against 
thoughts of you.” 

“ Do not pray against me, Sainte Jeanne,” said 
the explorer, with a wistful tremor of the lower 



Her eyes rested on him. 


lip. “ Consider how few there be that love me 
well.” 

Her eyes rested on him with divining gaze. 
Jeanne le Ber’s eyes had the singular function 
of sending innumerable points of light swimming 
through the iris, as if the soul were in motion 
and shaking off sparkles. 


52 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


“ If you lack love and suffer thereby,” she 
instructed him, “ it will profit your soul.” 

La Salle interlaced his fingers, resting his 
hands upon his knees, and gave her a look 
which was both amused and tender. 

“ And what other enemies has Sainte Jeanne? ” 
Sieur de la Salle, have I not often told you 
what a sinner I am? It ridicules me to call me 
saint.” 

“ Since you have grown to be a young demoi- 
selle I ought to call you Mademoiselle le Ber.” 

“Call me Sainte Jeanne rather than that. I 
do not want to be a young demoiselle, or in 
this glittering company. It is my father who 
insists.” 

“ Nor do I want to be in this glittering com- 
pany, Sainte Jeanne.” 

“The worst of all the other enemies, Sieur de 
la Salle, are vanity and a dread of enduring pain. 
I am very fond of dress.” The young creature 
drew a deep regretful breath. 

“But you mortify this fondness?” said La 
Salle, accompanying with whimsical sympathy 
every confession of Jeanne le Bers. 

“Indeed I have to humiliate myself often — 
often. When this evil desire takes strong hold, 


SAINTE JEANNE. 


53 


I put on the meanest rag I can find. But my 
father and mother will never let me go thus 
humbled to Mass.” 

“ Therein do I commend your father and 
mother,” said La Salle; “though the outside 
we bear toward men is of little account. But 
tell me how do you school yourself to pain, 
Sainte Jeanne? I have not learned to bear pain 
well in all my years.” 

Jeanne again met his face with swarming lights 
in her eyes. Seeing that no one observed them 
she bent her head toward La Salle and parted 
the hair over her crown. The straight fine 
growth was very thick and of a brown color. 
It reminded him of midwinter swamp grasses 
springing out of a bed of snow. A mat of 
burrs was pressed to this white scalp. Some of 
the hair roots showed red stains. 

“ These hurt me all the time,” said Jeanne. 
“ And it is excellent torture to comb them 
out.” 

She covered the burrs with a swift pressure, 
tightly closing her mouth and eyes with the 
spasm of pain this caused, and once more took 
and folded the crucifix within her hands. 

The explorer made no remonstrance against 


54 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


such self-torture, though his practical gaze re- 
mained on her youthful brier-crowned head. He 
heard a girl in front of him laugh to a courtier 
who was flattering her. 

“ He, monsieur, I have myself seen Quebec 
women who dressed with odious taste.” 

But Jeanne, wrapped in her own relation, con- 
tinued with a tone which slighted mere physical 
pain, — 

“ There is a better way to suffer, Sieur de la 
Salle, and that is from ill-treatment. Such an- 
guish can be dealt out by the hands we love; 
but I have no friend willing to discipline me 
thus. My father’s servant Jolycoeur is the only 
person who makes me as wretched as I ought 
to be.” 

“ Discipline through Jolycoeur,” said La Salle, 
laughing, “ is what my proud stomach could 
never endure.” 

“ Perhaps you have not such need, Sieur de la 
Salle. My father has many times turned him 
off, but I plead until he is brought back. He 
hath this whole year been a means of grace to 
me by his great impudence. If I say to him, 
‘Jolycoeur, do this or that,’ he never fails to 
reply, ‘ Do it yourself, Mademoiselle Jeanne,’ and 


SAINTE JEANNE. 


55 


adds profanity to make Heaven blush. When- 
ever he can approach near enough, he whispers 
contemptuous names at me, so that I cannot 
keep back the tears. Yet how little I endure, 
when Saint Lawrence perished on a gridiron, 
and all the other holy martyrs shame me ! ” 

Your father does not suffer these things to 
be done to you?” 

“ No, Sieur de la Salle. My father knows 
naught of it except my pity. He did once kick 
Jolycoeur, who left our house three days, so that 
I was in danger of sinking in slothful comfort. 
But I got him brought back, and he lay drunk 
in our garden with his mouth open, so that my 
soul shuddered to look at him. It was excellent 
discipline,”^ said Jeanne, with a long breath. 

“ Jolycceur will better adorn the woods and 
risk his worthless neck on water for my uses, 
than longer chafe your tender nature,” said La 
Salle. “ He has been in my service before, and 
craved to-day that I would enlist him again.” 

‘‘Had my father turned him off?” asked 
Jeanne, with consternation. 

1 The asceticism here attributed to Mademoiselle Jeanne le 
Ber was really practised by the wife of an early colonial noble. 
See Parkman’s Old Regime, p. 355. 


56 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


“ He said Jacques le Ber had lifted a hand 
against him for innocently neglecting to carry 
bales of merchandise to a booth.” 

“ I did miss the smell of rum downstairs be- 
fore we came away,” said the girl, sadly. “ And 
will you take my scourge from me, Sieur de la 
Salle?” 

“ I will give him a turn at suffering himself,” 
answered La Salle. “ The fellow shall be 
whipped on some pretext when I get him within 
Fort Frontenac, for every pang he hath laid 
upon you. He is no stupid. He knew what he 
was doing.” 

“ Oh, Sieur de la Salle, Jolycoeur was only the 
instrument of Heaven. He is not to blame.” 

“ If I punish him not, it will be on your 
promise to seek no more torments, Sainte 
Jeanne.” 

“ There are no more for me to seek ; for who 
in our house will now be unkind to me? But, 
Sieur de la Salle, I feel sure that during my life- 
time I shall be permitted to suffer as much as 
Heaven could require.” 

Man and child, each surrounded by his pecu- 
liar world, sat awhile longer together in silence, 
and then La Salle joined the governor. 


VI. 

THE PROPHECY OF JOLYCCEUR. 

T3Y next mid-day the beaver fair was at its 
^ height, and humming above the monotone 
of the St. Lawrence. 

Montreal, founded by religious enthusiasts and 
having the Sulpitian priests for its seigniors, was 
a quiet town when left to itself, — when the fac- 
tions of Quebec did not meet its own factions in 
the street with clubs; or coureurs de bois roar 
along the house sides in drunken joy ; or sudden 
glares on the night landscape with attendant 
screeching proclaim an Iroquois raid ; or this 
annual dissipation in beaver skins crowd it for 
two days with strangers. 

Among colonists who had thronged out to 
meet the bearers of colonial riches as soon as 
the first Indian canoe was beacl^ed, were the 
coureurs de bois. They still swarmed about, 
making or renewing acquaintances, here acting 


58 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


as interpreters and there trading on their own 
account. 

Before some booths Indians pressed in rows, 
demanding as much as the English gave for their 
furs, though the price was set by law. French 
merchants poked their fingers into the satin 
pliancy of skins to search for flaws. Dealers 
who had no booths pressed with their inter- 
preters from tribe to tribe, — small merchants 
picking the crumbs of profit from under their 
brethren’s tables. There was greedy demand 
for the first quality of skins ; for beaver came 
to market in three grades : “ Castor gras, castor 
demi-gras, et castor sec.” 

The booths were hung with finery, upon which 
squaws stood gazing with a stoical eye to be 
envied by civilized woman. 

The cassocks of Sulpitians and gray capotes 
of Recollet Fathers — favorites of Frontenac who 
hated Jesuits — penetrated in constant supervi- 
sion every recess of the beaver fair. Yet in spite 
of this religious care rum was sold, its effects 
increasing as the day moved on. 

A hazy rosy atmosphere had shorn the sun so 
that he hung a large red globe in the sky. The 
land basked in melting tints. Scarcely any wind 


THE PROPHECY OF JOLYCCEUR. 59 

flowed on the river. Ste. Helen’s Island and 
even Mount Royal, the seminary and stone wind- 
mill, the row of wooden houses and palisade tips, 
all had their edges blurred by hazy light. 

Amusement could hardly be lacking in any 
gathering of French people not assembled for 
ceremonies of religion. In Quebec the gover- 
nor’s court were inclined to entertain themselves 
with their own performance of spectacles. But 
Montreal had beheld too many spectacles of a 
tragic sort, had grasped too much the gun and 
spade, to have any facility in mimic play. 

Still the beaver fair was enlivened by music 
and tricksy gambols. Through all the ever open- 
ing and closing avenues a pageant went up and 
down, at which no colonist of New France could 
restrain his shouts of laughter, — a Dutchman 
with enormous stomach, long pipe, and short 
breeches, walking beside a lank and solemn 
Bostonnais. The two youths who had attired 
themselves for this masking were of Saint-Cas- 
tin’s train. That one who acted Puritan had 
drawn austere seams in his face with charcoal. 
His plain collar was severely turned down over 
a black doublet, which, with the sombre breeches 
and hose, had perhaps been stripped from some 


6o 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


enemy that troubled Saint-Castin’s border. The 
Bostonnais sung high shrill airs from a book he 
carried in one hand, only looking up to shake 
his head with cadaverous warning at his roaring 
spectators. One arm was linked in the Dutch- 
man’s, who took his pipe out of his mouth to 
say good humoredly, “ Ya-ya, ya-ya,” to every 
sort of taunt. 

These types of rival colonies were such an 
exhilaration to the traders of New France that 
they pointed out the show to each other and 
pelted it with epithets all day. 

La Salle came out of the palisade gate of the 
town, leading by the hand a frisking little girl. 
He restrained her from farther progress into the 
moving swarm, although she dragged his arm. 

“ Thou canst here see all there is of it, Barbe. 
The nuns did well to oppose your looking on 
this roaring commerce. You should be housed 
within the Hotel Dieu all this day, had I not 
spoken a careless word yesterday. You saw 
the governor’s procession. To-morrow he will 
start on his return. And I with my men go to 
Fort Frontenac.” 

“ And at day dawn naught of the Indians can 
be found,” added Barbe, “ except their ashes 



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THE PROPHECY OF JOLYCCEUR. 63 

and litter and the broken flasks they leaVe. The 
trader’s booths will also be empty and dirty.” 

“ Come then, tiger-cat, return to thy cage.” 

“ My uncle La Salle, let me look a moment 
longer. ' See that fat man and his lean brother 
the people are pointing at! Even the Indians 
jump and jeer. I would strike them for such 
insolence I There, my uncle La Salle, there is 
Monsieur Iron-hand talking to the ugly servant 
of Jeanne le Ber’s father.” 

La Salle easily found Tonty. He was in- 
structing and giving orders to several men col- 
lected for the explorer’s service. Jolycoeur,^ 
his cap set on sidewise, was yet abashed in his 
impudence by the mastery of Tonty. He wore 
a new suit of buckskin, with the coureur de 
bois’ red sash knotted around his waist. 

“ My uncle La Salle,” inquired Barbe, turning 
over a disturbance in her mind, “ must I live 
in the convent until I wed a man?” 

“ The convent is held a necessary discipline 
for young maids.” 

1 Several historians identify Jolycoeur with the noted coureur 
de bois and writer, Nicolas Perrot. But considering the deed he 
attempted, the romancer has seen fit to portray him as a very 
different person. 


64 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


“ I will then choose Monsieur Iron-hand di- 
rectly. He would make a good husband.” 

“ I think you are right,” agreed La Salle. 

“ Because he would have but one hand to 
catch me with when I wished to run away,” 
explained Barbe. “ If he had also lost his feet 
it would be more convenient.” 

“The marriage between Monsieur de Tonty 
and Mademoiselle Barbe Cavelier may then be 
arranged? ” 

She looked at her uncle, answering his smile 
of amusement. But curving her neck from side 
to side, she still examined the Italian soldier. 

“ I can outrun most people,” suggested Barbe ; 
“ but Monsieur de Tonty looks very tall and 
strong.” 

“ Your intention is to take to the woods as 
soon as marriage sets you free?” 

“ My uncle La Salle, I do have such a desire 
to be free in the woods ! ” 

“ Have you, my child? If the wilderness 
thus draws you, you will sometime embrace it. 
Cavelier blood is wild juice.” 

“And could I take my fortune with me? If 
it cumbered I would leave it behind with Mon- 
sieur de Tonty or my brother.” 


THE PROPHECY OF JOLYCGEUR. 65 

“You will need all your fortune for ventures 
in the wilderness.” 

“ And the fortunes of all your relatives and 
of as many as will give you credit besides,” 
said a priest wearing the Sulpitian dress. He 
stopped before them and looked sternly at 
Barbe. 

The Abbe Jean Cavelier had not such robust 
manhood as his brother. In him the Cavelier 
round lower lip and chin protruded, and the 
eyebrows hung forward. 

La Salle had often felt that he stooped in 
conciliating Jean, when Jean held the family 
purse and doled out loans to an explorer always 
kept needy by great plans. 

Jean had strongly the instinct of accumula- 
tion. He gauged the discovery and settlement 
of a continent by its promise of wealth to him- 
self. His adherence to La Salle was therefore 
delicately adjusted by La Salle’s varying for- 
tunes ; though at all times he gratified himself 
by handling with tyranny this younger and dis- 
tinguished brother. Generous admiration of 
another’s genius flowering from his stock with 
the perfect expression denied him, was scarcely 
possible in Jean Cavelier. 

5 


66 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


“ The Sisters said I might come hither with 
my uncle La Salle,” replied Barbe, to his un- 
spoken rebuke. 

“ Into whose charge were your brother and 
yourself put when your parents died?” 

“ Into the charge of my uncle the Abbe 
Cavelier.” 

“Who brought your brother and you to this 
colony that he might watch over your nurture? ” 

“ My uncle the Abbe Cavelier.” 

“ It is therefore yoyr uncle the Abbe Cavelier 
who will decide when to turn you out among 
Indians and traders.” 

“ You carry too bitter a tongue, my brother 
Jean,” observed La Salle. “ The child has 
caught no harm. My own youth was cramped 
within religious walls.” 

“ You carry too arrogant a mind now, my 
brother La Salle. I heard it noted of you to- 
day that you last night sat apart and deigned 
no word to them that have been of use to you 
in Montreal.” 

La Salle’s face owned the sting. Shy natures 
have always been made to pay a tax on pride. 
But next to the slanderer we detest the bearer 
of his slander to our ears. 


THE PROPHECY OF JOLYCCEUR. 6 / 

“ It is too much for any man to expect in 
this world, — a brother who will defend him 
against his enemies.” 

As soon as this regret had burst from the 
explorer, he rested his look again on Tonty. 

“I do defend you,” asserted Abbe Cavelier; 
“ and more than that I impoverish myself for 
you. But now that you come riding back from 
France on a high tide of the king’s favor, I 
may not lay a correcting word on your haughty 
spirit. Neither yesterday nor to-day could I 
bring you to any reasonable state of humility. 
And all New France in full cry against you ! ” 

Extreme impatience darkened La Salle’s face ; 
but without further reply he drew Barbe’s hand 
and turned back with her toward the H6tel 
Dieu. She had watched her uncle the Abbe 
wrathfully during his attack upon La Salle, but 
as he dropped his eyes no more to her level 
she was obliged to carry away her undischarged 
anger. This she did with a haughty bearing 
so like La Salle’s that the Abbe grinned at it 
through his fretfulness. 

He grew conscious of alien hair bristling 
against his neck as a voice mocked in under- 
tone directly below his ear, — 


68 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


“Yonder struts a great Bashaw that will 
sometime be laid low ! ” 

The Abbe turned severely upon a person who 
presumed to tickle a priest’s neck with his 
coarse mustache and astound a priest’s ear with 
threats. 

He recognized the man known as Jolycoeur, 
who had been pushed against him in the throng. 
Jolycoeur, by having his eyes fixed on the dis- 
appearing figure of La Salle, had missed the 
ear of the person he intended to reach. He 
recoiled from encountering the Abbe, whose 
wrath with sudden ebb ran back from a brother 
upon a brother’s foes. 

“ You are the fellow I saw whining yesterday 
at Sieur de la Salle’s heels. What hath the 
Sieur de la Salle done to any of you worth- 
less woods-rangers, except give you labor and 
wages, when the bread you eat is a waste of 
his substance?” 

Jolycoeur, not daring to reply to a priest, 
slunk away in the crowd. 


25oo(i II. 

FORT FRONTENAC. 


1683 A. D. 





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RIVAL MASTERS. 

'^HE gate of Fort Frontenac opened to admit 
^ several persons headed by a man who had a 
closely wrapped girl by his side. Before wooden 
palisades and walls of stone enclosed her, she 
turned her face to look across the mouth of Cata- 
raqui River and at Lake Ontario rippling full of 
submerged moonlight. A magnified moon was 
rising. Farther than eye could reach it softened 
that northern landscape and provoked mystery 
in the shadows of the Thousand Islands. 

South of the fort were some huts set along the 
margin of Ontario according to early French 
custom, which demanded a canoe highway in 
front of every man’s door. West of these, half 
hid by forest, was an Indian village; and distinct 
between the two rose the huge w’hite cross 
planted by Father Hennepin when he was first 
sent as missionary to Fort Frontenac. 


72 


THE STORY OF 7 OX TV. 



An officer appeared beside the sentinel at the 
gate, and took off his hat before the muffled 
shape led first into his fortress. She bent her 
head for this civility and held her father’s arm in 


An officer appeared beside the sentinel. 

silence. Canoemen and followers with full 
knowledge of the place moved on toward bar- 
racks or bakery. But the officer stopped their 
master, saying, — 

“ Monsieur le Ber, I have news for you.” 

“ I have none for you,” responded the mer- 
chant. “ It is ever the same story, — men lost in 
the rapids and voyagers drenched to the skin. 


RIVAL MASTERS. 


73 


However, we had but one man drowned this 
time, and are only half dead of fatigue ourselves. 
Let us have some supper at once. What are 
your reports ? ” 

“ Monsieur, the Sieur de la Salle arrived here 
a few hours ago from the fort on the Illinois.” 

“ The Sieur de la Salle? ” 

“ Yes, monsieur.” 

“ Why did you let him in ? ” demanded Le 
Ber, fiercely. “ He hath no rights in this for- 
tress now.” 

“ His men were much exhausted, monsieur.” 

“ He could have camped at the settlement.” 

“ Monsieur, I wish to tell you at once that the 
last families have left the settlement.” 

“ The Indians are yet there? ” 

“ Yes, monsieur. But our settlers were afraid 
our Indians would join the other Iroquois.” 

“ How many men had La Salle with him? ” 

“ No more than half your party, monsieur 
There was Jolycoeur — ” 

“ I tell you La Salle has no rights in this fort,” 
interrupted Le Ber. “If he meddles with his 
merchandise stored here which the government 
has seized upon, I will arrest him.” 

“ Yes, monsieur. The Father Louis Hennepin • 


-O'.''?-?'. 


74 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


has also arrived from the wilderness after great 
peril and captivity.” 

“ Tell me that La Salle’s man Tonty is here ! 
Tell me that there is a full muster of all the 
vagabonds from Michillimackinac ! Tell me that 
Fort St. Louis of the Illinois hath moved on Fort 
Frontenac ! ” 

The merchant’s voice ascended a pyramid of 
vexation. 

“ No, monsieur. Monsieur de Tonty is not 
here. And the Father Louis Hennepin^ only 
rests a few days before the fatigue of descending 
the rapids to Montreal. It was a grief to him to 
find his mission and the settlement so decayed 
after only five years’ absence.” 

“ Why do you fret me with the decay of the 
mission and breaking up of the settlement? If I 
were here as commandant of this fort I might 
then be blamed for its ruin. Perhaps my asso- 
ciates made a mistake in retaining an officer who 
had served under La Salle.” 

The commandant made no retort, but said, — 

“ Monsieur, I had almost forgotten to tell you 
we have another fair demoiselle within our walls 
to the honor of Fort Frontenac. The Abbe 

1 Historians return Father Hennepin to France in i68i. 


RIVAL MASTERS. 


75 


Cavelier with men from Lachine, arrived this 
morning, his young niece being with him. 
There are brave women in Montreal.” 

“That is right, — that is right!” exclaimed 
the irritable merchant. “ Call all the Cavelier 
family hither and give up the fortress. I heard 
the Abb6 had ventured ahead of me.” 

“ Monsieur le Ber, what can they do against 
the king and the governor? Both king and 
governor have dispossessed La Salle. I admitted 
him as any wayfarer. The Abbe Cavelier came 
with a grievance against his brother. He hath 
lost money by him the same as others.” 

“ Thou shalt not be kept longer in the night 
air,” said Le Ber, with sudden tenderness to his 
daughter. “ There is dampness within these 
walls to remind us of our drenchings in the 
rapids.” 

“We have fire in both upper and lower rooms 
of the officers’ quarters,” said the commandant. 

They walked toward the long dwelling, their 
shadows stretching and blending over the ground. 

“Where Have you lodged these men?” in- 
quired Le Ber. 

The officer pointed to the barrack end of the 
structure made of hewed timbers. The wider 


76 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


portion intended for commandant’s headquarters 
was built of stone, with Norman eaves and win- 
dows. Near the barracks stood a guardhouse. 
The bakery was at the opposite side of the 
gateway, and beyond it was the mill. La Salle 
had founded well this stronghold in the wilder- 
ness. Walls of hewed stone enclosed three sides, 
nine small cannon being mounted thereon.^ Pali- 
sades were the defence on the water side. Fort 
Frontenac was built with four bastions. In two of 
these bastions were vaulted towers which served 
as magazines for ammunition.^ A well was dug 
within the walls. 

The moon threw silhouette palisades on the 
ground, and made all these buildings cut blocks 
of shadow. There was a stir of evening wind in 
the forest all around. 

“ The men are in the barracks. But Sieur de 
la Salle is in the officers’ house.” 

“ May I ask you, Commandant,” demanded Le 
Ber, “ where you propose to lodge my daughter 
whom I have brought through the perils of the 
rapids, and cannot now return with?” 

“ Mademoiselle le Ber is most welcome to my 

^ Parkman. 

2 Manuscript relating to early history of Canada. 


RIVAL MASTERS. 


77 


own apartment, monsieur, and I will myself come 
downstairs.” 

“ Have you no empty rooms in the officers’ 
quarters? ” 

“ One near mine for yourself, monsieur. But 
with the Abbe and his niece and the boy and 
La Salle and Father Hennepin, to say no more, 
can we have many empty rooms? Father Hen- 
nepin is lodged downstairs, but La Salle hath his 
old room overlooking the river.” 

“ How does he appear, Commandant? ” 

“ Worn in his garb and very thin visaged, but 
unmoved by his misfortunes as a man of rock. 
Any one else would be prostrate and hopeless.” 

“ A madman,” pronounced Le Ber. 

Careless laughter resounded from the barracks. 
.Some water creature made so distinct a splash 
and struggle in Cataraqui River that imagina- 
tion followed the widening circles spreading 
from its body until an island broke their huge 
circumference. 

“ See, that something be sent us from the 
bakehouse,” said Le Ber to the command- 
ant, before leading his daughter into the quar- 
ters. “ My men have brought provisions from 
Montreal.” 


78 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


“ We can give you a good supper, monsieur. 
Two young deer were brought in to-day. As 
for Monsieur de la Salle,” the commandant 
added, turning back from the door of the bar- 
racks, “ you will perhaps not meet him at all 
in the officers’ quarters. He ate and threw 
himself down at once to sleep, and he is in 
haste to set forward to Quebec.” 

The bakehouse was illuminated by its oven 
fire which shone with a dull crimson through 
the open door, but failed to find out dusky 
corners where bales, barrels, and cook’s tools 
were stored. The oven was built in the wall, 
of stone and cement. The cook, a skipping 
little fellow smocked in white and wearing a 
cap, said to himself as he raked out coals and 
threw them in the fireplace, — 

“ What a waste of good material is this, when 
they glow and breathe with such ardor to roast 
some worthy martyr ! ” 

“ The beginning of a martyr is a saint,” ob- 
served a soldier of the garrison, putting his 
fur-covered head between door and door-post 
in the little space he opened. “ We have a 
saint just landed at Fort Frontenac.” 

He stepped in and shut the door, to lounge 


MAS7'ERS. 


79 


with the cook while the order he brought was 
obeyed. 

“ Some of the best you have, with a tender 
cut of venison, for Jacques le Ber and his 
daughter. And some salt meat for his men 
in the barracks.” 

The cook made light skips across the floor 
and returned with venison. 

“ Well-timed, my child ; for the coals are 
ready, and so are my cakes for the oven. Le 
Ber is soon served. Get upon your knees by 
the hearth and watch this cut broil, while I 
slice the larding for the sore sides of these 
fellows that labored through the rapids.” 

When you are housed in a garrison the cook 
becomes a potentate ; the soldier went willingly 
down as assistant. 

“ Are all the demoiselles of Montreal coming 
to Fort Frontenac? ” inquired the cook, skipping 
around a great block on which lay a slab of 
cured meat, and nicely poising his knife-tip 
over it. 

“ That I cannot tell you,” replied the soldier, 
beginning to perspire before the coals. Le 
Ber’s men have been talking in the barracks 
about this daughter of his. He brought her 


8o 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


almost by force out of his house, where she 
has taken to shutting herself in her own room.” 

“ I have heard of this demoiselle,” said the 
cook. “ May the saints incline more women to 
shut themselves up at home ! ” 

“ She is his favorite child. He brought her 
on this dangerous voyage to wean her from too 
much praying.” 

“ Too much praying ! ” exclaimed the cook. 

^‘He desires to have her look more on the 
world, lest she should die of holiness,” ex- 
plained the soldier. 

“Turn that venison,” shouted the cook. “Was 
there ever a saint who liked burnt meat? I 
could lift this Jacques le Ber on a hot fork 
for dragging out a woman who inclined to stay 
praying in the house. Some men are stone 
blind to the blessings of Heaven ! ” 


n. 


A TRAVELLED FRIAR. 

'"T^HE lower room of the officers’ lodging was 
^ filled with the light of a fire. To the 
hearth was drawn a half-circle of men, their 
central figure being a Recollet friar, so ragged 
and weather-stained that he seemed some eccle- 
siastical scarecrow placed there to excite laugh- 
ter and tears in his beholders. 

This group arose as Jacques le Ber entered 
with his daughter, and were eager to be of 
service to her. 

“There is a fire lighted in the hall upstairs 
by which mademoiselle can sit,” said the ser- 
geant of the fort. 

Le Ber conducted her to the top of a stair- 
case which ascended the side of the room 
before he formally greeted any one present. He 
returned, unwinding his saturated wool wrap- 
pings and pulling off his cap of beaver skin. 
He was a swarthy man with anxious and cal- 
culating wrinkles between his eyebrows. 

6 


82 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


“Do I see Father Hennepin?” exclaimed 
Le Ber, squaring his mouth, “ or is this a false 
image of him set before me?” 

“You see Father Hennepin,” the friar re- 
sponded with dignity, — “explorer, missionary 
among the Sioux, and sufferer in the cause of 
religion.” 

“ How about that hunger for adventure, — 
hast thou appeased it?” inquired Le Ber with 
freedom of manner he. never assumed toward 
any other priest. 

The merchant stood upon the hearth steaming 
in front of the tattered Recollet, who from his 
seat regarded his half-enemy with a rebuking 
eye impressive to the other men. 

“Jacques le Ber, my son, while your greedy 
hands have been gathering money, the poor 
Franciscan has baptized heathen, discovered and 
explored rivers; he has lived the famished life 
of a captive, and come nigh death in many 
ways. I have seen a great waterfall five hun- 
dred feet high, whereunder four carriages might 
pass abreast without being wet. I have de- 
pended for food on what Heaven sent. Vast 
fish are to be found in the waters of that 
western land, and there also you may see beasts 



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A A FELLED EE LAE. 85 

having manes and hoofs and horns, to frighten 
a Christian.” 

“ And what profit doth La Salle get out of 
all this?” inquired Le Ber, spreading his legs 
before the fire as he looked down at Father 
Hennepin. 

“ What I have accomplished has been done 
for the spread of the faith, and not for the glory 
of Monsieur de la Salle, who has treated me 
badly.” 

“Does he ever treat any one well?” exclaimed 
Le Ber. “ Does not every man in his service 
want to shoot him?” 

“ He has an over-haughty spirit, which breaks 
out into envy of men like me,” admitted the 
good Fleming, whose weather-seamed face and 
plump lips glowed with conscious greatness be- 
fore the fire. “ I have decided to avoid further 
encounter with Monsieur de la Salle while we 
both remain at Fort Frontenac, for my rnind is 
set on peace, and it is true where Monsieur de 
la Salle appears there can be no peace.” 

Jacques le Ber turned himself to face the 
chimney. 

“Thou hast no doubt accomplished a great 
work. Father Hennepin,” he said, with the im* 


86 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


mediate benevolence a man feels toward one 
who has reached his point of view. “ When I 
have had supper with my daughter I will sit 
down here and beg you to tell me all that be- 
fell your wanderings, and what savages they 
were who received the faith at your hands, and 
how the Sieur de la Salle hath turned even a 
Recollet Father against himself.” 

“ Perhaps Father Hennepin will tell about his 
buffalo hunt,” suggested the sergeant of the 
fortress, “ and how he headed a wounded buffalo 
from flight and drove it back to be shot.” ^ 

P'ather Hennepin looked down at patches of 
buffalo hide which covered holes in his habit. 
He remembered the trampling of a furious 
beast’s hoofs and the twitch of its short sharp 
horn in his folds of flesh as it lifted him. He 
remembered his wounds and the soreness of 
his bones which lasted for months, yet his lips 
parted over happy teeth and he roared with 
laughter. 

^ In reality this was Father Membre’s adventure. 


III. 


HEAVEN AND EARTH. 

J EANNE LE BER sat down upon a high- 
backed bench before the fire in the upper 
room. This apartment was furnished and deco- 
rated only by abundant firelight, which danced 
on stone walls and hard dark rafters, on rough 
floor and high enclosure of the stairway. At 
opposite sides of the room were doors which 
Jeanne did not know opened into chambers 
scarcely larger than the sleepers who might 
lodge therein. 

She sat in strained thought, without unwrap 
ping herself, though shudders were sent through 
her by damp raiment. When her father came 
up with the sergeant who carried their supper, 
he took off her cloak, smoothed her hair, and 
tenderly reproved her. He set the dishes on 
the bench between them, and persuaded Jeanne 
to eat what he carved for her, — a swarthy nurse 
whose solicitude astounded the soldier. 


88 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


Another man came up and opened the door 
nearest the chimney, on that side which over- 
looked the fortress enclosure. He paused in 
descending, loaded with the commandant’s pos- 
sessions, to say that this bedroom was designed 
for mademoiselle, and was now ready. 

“And thou must get to it as soon as the river's 
chill is warmed out of thy bones,” said Le Ber. 
“ I will sit and hear the worthy friar downstairs 
tell his strange adventures. The sound of your 
voice can reach me with no effort whatever. My 
bedroom will be next yours, or near by, and no 
harm can befall you in P'ort Frontenac.” 

Jeanne kissed his cheek before he returned to 
the lower room, and when the supper was re- 
moved she sat drying herself by the fire. 

The eager piety of her early girlhood, which 
was almost fantastic in its expression, had yet 
worked out a nobly spiritual face. She was a 
beautiful saint. 

For several years Jeanne le Ber had refused 
the ordinary clothing of women. Her visible 
garment was made of a soft fine blanket of white 
wool, with long sleeves falling nearly to her feet 
It was girded to her waist by a cord from which 
hung her rosary. Her neck stood slim and 


HEAVEN AND EARTH. 


89 


white above the top of this robe, without orna- 
ment except the peaked monk’s hood which 
hung behind it. 

This creature like a flame of living white fire 
stood up and turned her back to the ruddier 
logs, and clasped her hands across the top of 
her head. Her eyes wasted scintillations on 
rafters while she waited for heavenly peace to 
calm the strong excitement, driving her. 

The door of Jeanne’s chamber stood open as 
the soldier had left it. At the opposite side of the 
room a similar door opened, and La Salle came 
out. He moved a step toward the hearth, but 
stopped, and the pallor of a swoon filled his face. 

“ Sieur de la Salle,” said Jeanne in a whisper. 
She let her arms slip down by her sides. The 
eccentric robe with its background of firelight 
cast her up tall and white before his eyes. 

In the explorer’s most successful moments he 
had never appeared so majestic. Though his 
dress was tarnished by the wilderness, he had it 
carefully arranged ; for he liked to feel it fitting 
him with an exactness which would not annoy 
his thoughts. 

No formal greeting preluded the crash of this 
encounter between La Salle and Jeanne le Ber. 


90 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


What had lain repressed by prayer and penance, 
or had been trodden down league by league in 
the wilds, leaped out with strength made mighty 
by such repression. 

Voices in loud and merry conversation below 
and occasional laughter came up the open stair- 
way and made accompaniment to this half-hushed 
duet. 

“Jeanne,” stammered La Salle. 

“ Sieur de la Salle, I was just going to my 
room.” 

She moved away from him to the side of the 
hearth, as he advanced and sat down upon the 
bench. Unconscious that she stood while he 
was sitting, as if overcome by sudden blindness 
he reached toward her with a groping gesture. 

“ Take hold of my hand, Sainte Jeanne.” 

“ And if I take hold of your hand, Sieur de la 
Salle,” murmured the girl, bending toward him 
though she held her arms at her sides, “ what 
profit will it be to either of us? ” 

“ I beg that you will take hold of my hand.” 

Her hand, quivering to each finger tip, moved 
out and met and was clasped in his. La Salle’s 
head dropped on his breast. 

Jeanne turned away her face. Voices and 


HEAVEN AND EARTH. 


91 


laughter jangled in the room below. Jn this 
silent room pulse answered pulse, and with slow 
encounter eyes answered the adoration of eyes. 
In terror of herself Jeanne uttered the whispered 
cry, — 

“ I am afraid ! 

She veiled herself with the long sleeve of her 
robe. 

“ And of what should you be afraid when we 
are thus near together?” said La Salle. “The 
thing to be afraid of is losing this. Such glad- 
ness has been long coming; for I was a man 
when you were born, Sainte Jeanne.” 

“ Let go my hand, Sieur de la Salle.” 

“ Do you want me to let it go, Sainte Jeanne? ” 

“ No, Sieur de la Salle.” 

Dropping her sleeve Jeanne faced heaven 
through the rafters. Tears stormed down her 
face, and her white throat swelled with strong 
repressed sobs. Like some angel caught in a 
snare, she whispered her up-directed wail, — 

“ All my enormity must now be confessed ! 
Whenever Sieur de la Salle has been assailed 
my soul rose up in arms for him. Oh, my poor 
father! So dear has Sieur de la Salle been to 
me that I hated the hatred of my father. What 


92 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


shall I do to tear out this awful love? I have 
fought it through midnights and solitary days of 
ceaseless prayer. Oh, Sieur de la Salle, why art 
thou such a man? Pray to God and invoke 
the saints for me, and help me to go free from 
this love ! ” 

“ Jeanne,” said La Salle, “ you are so holy I 
dare touch no more than this sweet hand. It 
fills me with life. Ask me not to pray to God 
that he will take the life from me. Oh, Jeanne, 
if you could reach out of your eternity of devo- 
tion and hold me always by the hand, what a 
man I might be ! ” 

She dropped her eyes to his face, saying like 
a soothing mother, — 

“ Thou greatest and dearest, there is a gulf 
between us which we cannot pass. I am vowed 
to Heaven. Thou art vowed to great enterprises. 
The life of the family is not for us. If God 
showed me my way by thy side I would go 
through any wilderness. But Jeanne was made 
to listen in prayer and silence and secrecy and 
anguish for the word of Heaven. The worst 
is,” — her stormy sob again shook her from head 
to foot, — “ you will be at court, and beautiful 
women will love the great explorer. And one 


HEAVEN AND EARTH. 


93 


will shine ; she will be s^ like a star as high as 
the height of being your wife. And Jeanne, — 
oh, Jeannq! here in this rough, new world, — 
she must eternally learn to be nothing ! ” 

“ My wifip ! ” said La Salle, turning her hand 
in his clasp, and laying his cheek in her palm. 
“ You are my wife. There is no court. There is 
no world to discover. There is only the sweet, 
the rose-tender palm of my wife where I can lay 
my tired cheek and rest.” 

Jeanne’s fingers moved with involuntary ca- 
ressing along the lowest curve of his face. 

An ember fell on the hearth beside them, and 
Father Hennepin emphasized some point in his 
relation with a stamp of his foot. 

“ You left a glove at my father’s house, Sieur 
de la Salle, and I hid it; I put my face to it 
And when I burned it, my own blood seemed to 
ooze out of that crisping glove.” 

La Salle trembled. The dumb and solitary 
man was dumb and solitary in his love. 

“ Now we must part,” breathed Jeanne. 
“ Heaven is strangely merciful to sinners. I 
never could name you to my confessor or show 
him this formless anguish ; but now that it has 
been owned and cast out, my heart is glad.” 


94 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


La Salle rose up and stood by the hearth. As 
she drew her hand from his continued hold he 
opened his arms. Jeanne stepped backward, 
her eyes swarming with motes of light. She 
turned and reached her chamber door; but as 
the saint receded from temptation the woman 
rose in strength. She ran to La Salle, and with 
a tremor and a sob in his arms, met his mouth 
with the one kiss of her life. As suddenly she 
ran from him and left him. 

La Salle had had his sublime moment of 
standing at the centre of the universe and seeing 
all things swing around him, which' comes to 
every one successful in embodying a vast idea. 
But from this height he looked down at that 
experience. 

He stood still after Jeanne’s door closed until 
he felt his own intrusion. This drove him down- 
stairs and out of the house, regardless of Jacques 
le Ber, Father Hennepin, and the officers of the 
fortress, who turned to gaze at his transit. 

Proud satisfaction, strange in a ruined man, 
appeared on the explorer’s face. He felt his 
reverses as cobwebs to be brushed away. He 
was loved. The king had been turned against 
him. His enemies had procured Count Fronte- 


HEAVEN- AND EAETH 


95 


nac’s removal, and La Barre the new governor, 
conspiring to seize his estate, had ruined his 
credit. But he was loved. Even on this home- 
ward journey an officer had passed him with 
authority to take possession of his new post on 
the Illinois River. His discoveries were doubted 
and sneered at, as well as half claimed by boast- 
ing subordinates, who knew nothing about his 
greater views. Yet the only softener of this man 
of noble granite was a spirit-like girl, who re- 
garded the love of her womanhood as sin. 

La Salle stood in the midst of enemies. He 
stood considering merely how his will should 
break down the religious walls Jeanne built 
around herself, and how Jacques le Ber might 
be conciliated by shares in the profits of the 
West. Behind stretched his shadowed life, full 
of misfortune; good was held out to him to be 
withdrawn at the touch of his fingers. But this 
good he determined to have; and thinking of 
her. La Salle walked the stiffened frost-crisp 
ground of the fortress half the night. 


IV. 


A CANOE FROM THE ILLINOIS. 

HEN Barbe Cavelier awoke next morn- 



ing and saw around her the stone walls 


of Fort Frontenac instead of a familiar convent 
enclosure, she sat up in her bed and laughed 
aloud. The tiny cell echoed. Never before had 
laughter of young girl been heard there. And 
when she placed her feet upon the floor per- 
haps their neat and exact pressure was a surprise 
to battered planks used to the smiting tread 
of men. 

Barbe proceeded to dress herself, with those 
many curvings of neck and figure, which, in any 
age, seem necessary to the fit sitting of a young 
maid in her garments. Her aquiline face glowed, 
full of ardent life. 

Some raindrops struck the roof-window and 
ran down its panes like tears. When Barbe had 
considered her astounding position as the only 
woman in Fort Frontenac, and felt well com- 


A CANOE FROM THE ILLINOIS. 


97 


pacted for farther adventures, she sprung upon 
the bunk, and stood with her head near the roof, 
looking out into the fortress and its adjacent 
world. Among moving figures she could not 
discern her uncle La Salle, or her uncle the 
Abb6, or even her brother. These three must 
be yet in the officers’ house. Dull clouds were 
scudding. As Barbe opened the sash and put 
her head out the morning air met her with a 
chill. Fort Frontenac’s great walls half hid an 
autumn forest, crowding the lake’s distant border 
in measureless expanse of sad foliage. East- 
ward, she caught ghostly hints of islands on 
misty water. The day was full of depression. 
Ontario stood up against the sky, a pale green- 
ish fleece, raked at intervals by long wires of 
rain. 

But such influences had no effect on a healthy 
warm young creature, freed unaccountably from 
her convent, and brought on a perilous, delight- 
ful journey to so strange a part of her world. 

She noticed a parley going forward at the 
gate. Some outsider demanded entrance, for 
the sentry disappeared between the towers and 
returned for orders. He approached the com- 
mandant who stood talking with Jacques le 


7 


98 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


Ber, the merchant of Montreal. Barbe could 
see Le Ber’s face darken. With shrugs and 
negative gestures he decided against the new- 
comer, and the sentinel again disappeared to 
refuse admission. She wondered if a band of 
Iroquois waited outside. Among Abb6 Cave- 
lier’s complaints of La Salle was Governor la 
Barre’s accusation that La Salle stirred enmity 
in the Iroquois by protecting the Illinois tribe 
they wished to exterminate. 

“ Even these Indians on the lake shore,” medi- 
tated Barbe, “ who settled there out of friendship 
to my uncle La Salle, may turn against him and 
try to harm him as every one does now that his 
fortunes are low. I would be a man faithful to 
my friend, if I were a man at all.” 

She watched for a sight of the withdrawing 
party on the lake, and presently a large canoe 
holding three men shot out beyond the walls. 
One stood erect, gazing back at the fort with 
evident anxiety. Neither the smearing medium 
of damp weather nor increasing distance could 
rob Barbe of that man’s identity. His large 
presence, his singular carriage of the right arm, 
even his features sinking back to space, stamped 
him Henri de Tonty. 


A CANOE FROM THE ILLINOIS. 


99 


“ He has come here to see my uncle La Salle, 
and they have refused to let him enter,” she 
exclaimed aloud. 

Stripping a coverlet from her berth she 
whipped the outside air with it until the .crackle 
brought up a challenge from below. 



stripping a coverlet from her berth. 

Fort Frontenac was a seignorial rather than a 
military post, and its discipline had been lax 
since the governor’s Associates seized it, yet a 
sentinel paced this morning before the officers’ 
quarters. When he saw the signal withdrawn 
and a lovely face with dark eyelashes and ^ 


Lof C. 


lOO 


THE STORY OF TON TV. 


topknot of curls looking down at him, he could 
do nothing but salute it, and Barbe shut her 
window. 

Dropping in excitement from the bunk, she 
ran across the upper room to knock at La 
Salle’s door. 

A boy stood basking in solitude by the 
chimney. 

Her uncle La Salle’s apartment seemed filled 
with one strong indignant voice, leaking through 
crevices and betraying its matter to the com- 
mon hall. 

“You may knock there until you faint of 
hunger,” remarked the lad at the hearth. “ I 
also want my breakfast, but these precious Asso- 
ciates will let us starve in the fort they have 
stolen before they dole us out any food. I 
would not mind going into the barracks and 
messing, but I have you also to consider.” 

“ It is not anything to eat, Colin — it is press- 
ing need of my uncle La Salle ! ” 

“ The Abbe has pressing need of our uncle 
La Salle, It was great relief to catch him here 
at Frontenac. I have heard every bit of the 
lecture: what amounts our uncle the Abb6 has 
ventured in western explorations ; and what a 


A CANOE FROM THE ILLINOIS. 


101 


fruitless journey he has made here to rescue for 
himself some of the stores of this fortress; and 
what danger all we Caveliers stand in of being 
poisoned on account of my uncle La Salle, so 
that the Abbe can scarce trust us out of his 
sight, even with nuns guarding you.” 

To Barbe’s continued knocking her guardian 
made the curtest reply. He opened the door, 
looked at her sternly, saying, “ Go away, made- 
moiselle,” and shut it tightly again. 

She ran back to her lookout and was able 
to discern the same canoe moving off on the 
lake. 

“ Colin,” demanded Barbe, wrapping herself, 
“ You must run with me.” 

“ Certainly, mademoiselle, and I trust you are 
making haste toward a table.” 

“ We must run outside the fortress.” 

Though the boy felt it a grievance that he 
should follow instead of lead to any adventure, 
he dashed heartily out with her, intending to 
take his place when he understood the action. 
Rain charged full in their faces. The sentry 
was inclined to hold them at the fortress gate 
until he had orders, and Barbe’s impatience 
darted from her eyes. 


102 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


“ You will get me into trouble,” he said. 
“ This gate has been swinging over-much 
lately.” 

“ Let us out,” persuaded Colin. “ The Asso- 
ciates will not care what becomes of a couple 
of Caveliers.” 

“ Where are you going? ” 

“My sister wishes to riin to the Iroquois 
village,” responded Colin, “ and beg there for 
a little sagamite. We get nothing to eat in Fort 
Frontenac.” 

The soldier laughed. 

“ If you are going to the Iroquois village 
why don’t you say your errand is to Catharine 
Tegahkouita? It is no sin to ask an Indian 
saint’s prayers.” 

Barbe formed her lips to inquire, “ Has Tegah- 
kouita come to Fort Frontenac?” But this im- 
pulse passed into discreet silence, and the man 
let them out. 

They ran along the palisades southward, Barbe 
keeping abreast of Colin though she made skim- 
ming dips as the swallow flies, and with a detour 
quite to the lake’s verge, avoided the foundation 
of an outwork. 

Father Hennepin’s cross stood up, a huge 


A CANOE FROM THE ILLINOIS. 


103 


white landmark bctw'een habitant settlement on 
the lake, and Indian village farther west but 
visible through the clearing. Ontario seemed 
to rise higher and top the world, its green 
curves breaking at their extremities into white 
spatter, the one boat in sight making deep 
obeisance to heaving water. 

“Do you see a canoe riding yonder?” ex- 
claimed Barbe to Colin, as they ran along wet 
sand. 

“ Any one may see a canoe riding yonder. 
Was it to race with that canoe we came out, 
mademoiselle? ” 

“ Wave your arms and make signals to the 
men in it, Colin. They must be stopped. I 
am sure that one is Monsieur de Tonty, and 
they were turned away from the fortress gate. 
They have business with our uncle La Salle, 
and see how far they have gone before we 
could get out ourselves!” 

“ Why, then, did you follow?” demanded her 
brother, waving his arms and flinging his cap in 
the rain. “ They may have business with our 
uncle La Salle, but they have no business with 
a girl. This was. quite my affair. Mademoiselle 
Cavelier.” 


104 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


A maid whose feet were heavy with the mud of 
a once ploughed clearing could say little in praise 
of such floundering. She paid no attention to 
Colin’s rebuke, but watched for the canoe to turn 
landward. Satisfied that it was heading toward 
them, Barbe withdrew from the border of the 
lake. She would not shelter herself in any 
deserted hut of the habitant village. Colin 
followed her in v^exation to Father Hennepin’s 
mission house, remonstrating as he skipped, and 
turning to watch the canoe with rain beating his 
face. 

They found the door open. The floor was 
covered with sand blown there, and small stones 
cast by the hands of irreverent passing Indian 
boys. The chapel stood a few yards away, but 
this whole small settlement was dominated by 
its cross.^ 

Barbe and Colin were scarcely under this 
roof shelter before Tonty strode up to the door. 
He took off his hat with the left hand, his 
dark face bearing the rain like a hardy flower. 
Dangers, perpetual immersion in Nature, and the 

i“He (La Salle) gave us a piece of ground 15 arpents in 
front by 20 deep, the donation being accepted by Monsieur de 
Frontenac, syndic of our mission.” From Le Clerc. 


A CANOE FROM THE ILLINOIS. 


105 


stimulus of vast undertakings had so matured 
Tonty that Barbe felt more awe of his buckskin 
presence than her memory of the fine young 
soldier in Montreal could warrant. She wanted 
to look at him and say nothing. Colin, who 
knew this soldier only by reputation, was eager 
to meet and urge him into Father Hennepin’s 
house. 

Tonty’s reluctant step crunched sand on the 
boards. He kept his gaze upon Barbe and 
inquired, — 

“ Have I the honor, mademoiselle, to address 
the niece of Monsieur de la Salle?” 

“"^The niece and nephew of Monsieur de la 
Salle,” put forth Colin. 

“ Yes, monsieur. You may remember me 
as the young tiger-cat who sprung upon my 
uncle La Salle when you arrived with him from 
France.” 

“ I never forgot you, mademoiselle. You so 
much resemble Monsieur de la Salle.” 

“ It is on his account we have run out of 
the fort to stop you. He does not know you 
are here. I saw the sentinel close the gate 
against some one, and afterward your boat 
pushed out.” 


I06 THE STORY OF TON TV. 

“And did you shake a signal from an upper 
window in the fort?” 

“ Monsieur, I could not be sure that you saw 
it, though I could see your boat.” 

“ She made it very much her affair,” observed 
Colin, with the merciless disapproval of a lad. 
“ Monsieur de Tonty, there was no use in her 
trampling through sand and rain like a Huron 
witch going to some herb gathering. It was 
my business to do the errand of my uncle 
I. a Salle. When she goes back she will get 
a lecture and a penance, for all her sixteen 
years.” 

“ Mademoiselle,” said Tonty, “ I am distressed 
if my withdrawal from Fort Frontenac causes 
you trouble. I meant to camp here. I was 
determined to see Monsieur de la Salle.” 

“ Monsieur,” courageously replied Barbe, “you 
cause me no trouble at all. I thought you were 
returning to your fort on the Illinois. I did not 
stop to tell my brother, but made him run with 
me. It is a shame that the enemies of my uncle 
La Salle hold you out of Fort Frontenac.” 

“ But very little would you get to eat there,” 
consoled young Cavelier. “ We have had noth- 
ing to break our fast on this morning.” 


A CANOE FROM THE ILLINOIS. 


107 


“ Then let us get ready some breakfast for 
you,” proposed Tonty, as his men entered with 
the lading of the canoe. They had stopped at 
the doorstep, but Father Hennepin’s hewed log 
house contained two rooms, and he pointed them 
to the inner one. There they let down their 
loads, one man, a surgeon, remaining, and the 
other, a canoeman, going out again in search of 
fuel. 

“ Monsieur, it would be better for us to 
hurry back to the fortress and call my uncle 
La Salle.” 

“Nothing will satisfy you, mademoiselle,” de- 
nounced Colin. “ Out you must come to stop 
Monsieur de Tonty. Now back you must go 
through weather which is not fitting for any 
demoiselle to face.” 

“ Mademoiselle,” said Tonty, “ if you return 
now it will be my duty to escort you as far 
as the fortress gate.” 

Barbe drew her wrappings over her face, as he 
had seen a wild sensitive plant fold its leaves and 
close its cups. * 

“ I will retire to the chapel and wait there until 
my uncle La Salle comes,” she decided, “ and 
my brother mu.st run to call him.” 


io8 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


“ You may take to sanctuary as soon as you 
please,” responded Colin, “ and I will attend to 
my uncle La Salle’s business. But the first 
call I make shall be upon the cook in this 
camp.” 


V. 


FATHER HENNEPIN’S CHAPEL. 

'T^ONTY held a buffalo robe over Barbe during 
^ her quick transit from cabin to church. Its 
tanned side was toward the weather, and its 
woolly side continued to comfort her after she 
was under shelter. Tonty bestowed it around 
her and closed the door again, leaving her in the 
dim place. 

Father Plennepin’s deserted chapel was of 
hewed logs like his dwelling. A rude altar re- 
mained, but without any ornaments, for the Re- 
collet had carried these away to his western 
mission. Some unpainted benches stood in a 
row. The roof could be seen through rafters, 
and drops of rain with reiterating taps fell along 
the centre of the floor. A chimney of stones 
and cement was built outside the chapel, of such 
a size that its top yawned like an open cell for 
rain, snow, or summer sunshine. Within, it 
spread a generous hearth and an expanse of 


I 10 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


grayish fire-wall little marked by the blue incense 
which rises from burning wood. 

Barbe looked briefly around the chapel. She 
laid the buffalo hide before the altar and knelt 
upon it. 

Tonty returned with a load of fuel and busied 
himself at the fireplace. The boom of the lake, 
and his careful stirring and adjusting in ancient 
ashes, made a background to her silence. Yet 
she heard through her devotions every move- 
ment he made, and the low whoop peculiar to 
flame when it leaps to existence and seizes its 
prey. 

A torrent of fire soon poured up the flue. 
Tonty grasped a brush made of wood shavings, 
remnant of Father Hennepin’s housekeeping, 
and whirled dust and litter in the masculine 
fashion. When he left the chapel it glowed with 
the resurrected welcome it had given many a 
primitive congregation of Indians and French 
settlers, when the lake beat up icy winter foam. 

Beside the fireplace was a window so high that 
its log sill met Barbe’s chin as she looked out. 
Jutting roof and outer chimney wall made a snug 
spot like a sentry-box without. She dried her 
feet, holding them one at a time to the red hot 


FATHER HENNEPIN'S CHAPEL. 


1 1 I 



glow, and glanced 
through this window at 
the mission house’s sod- 
den logs and crumbled 
chinking. The excite- 
ment of her sally out 
of Fort Frontenac died 
away. She felt dis- 
tressed because she had 
come, and faint for her 

He approached. 

early convent breakfast. 

She saw Tonty through the window carrying 
a dish carefully covered. He approached the 
broken pane, and Barbe eagerly helped him to 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


I 12 

unfasten the sash and swing it out. In doing 
this, Tonty held her platter braced by his iron- 
handed arm. 

The fare was passed in to her without apology, 
and she received it with sincere gratitude, after- 
ward drawing a bench near the fire and sitting 
down in great privacy and comfort. 

The moccasins of a frontiersman could make 
no sound above flap of wind and pat of water. 
Tonty paced from window to chapel front, be- 
lieving that he kept out of Barbe’s sight. But 
after an interval he was amused to see, rising over 
the sill within, a topknot of curls, and eyes filled 
with the alert, shy spirit of the deer whose flesh 
she had just eaten. 

For some reason this scrutiny of Barbe’s made 
him regret that he had lain aside the gold and 
white uniform of France, and the extreme uses 
to which his gauntlets had been put. Entrenched 
behind logs she unconsciously poured the fires 
of her youth upon Tonty. 

Not only was one pane in the sash gone, but 
all were shattered, giving easy access to his voice 
as he stood still and explained. 

“Frontenac is a lonely post, mademoiselle. 
It is necessary for you to have a sentinel.” 


FATHER HENNEPIN'S CHAPEL. 


13 


“ Yes, monsieur ; you are very good.” Barbe 
accepted the fact with lowered eyelids. ” Has 
my brother yet gone to call my uncle La 
Salle?” 

“Yes, mademoiselle. As soon as we could 
give him some breakfast he set out.” 

“ Colin is a gourmand. All very young people 
gormandize more or less,” remarked Barbe, with 
a sense of emancipation from the class she 
condemned. 

“ I hope you could eat what I brought you? ” 

“ It was quite delicious, monsieur. I ate every 
bit of it.” 

The boom of the lake intruded between their 
voices. Barbe’s black eyelashes flickered sensi- 
tively upon her cheeks, and Tonty, feeling that 
he looked too steadily at her, dropped his eyes 
to his folded arms. 

“ Monsieur de Tonty,” inquired Barbe, appeal- 
ing to experience, “ do you think sixteen years 
very young?” 

“ It is the most charming age in the world, 
mademoiselle.” 

“Monsieur, I mean young for maturing one’s 
plan of life.” 

“ That depends upon the person,” replied 
8 


I 14 the story of tonty. 

Tonty. “ At sixteen I was revolting against the 
tyranny which choked Italy. And I was an 
exile from my country before the age of twenty, 
mademoiselle.” 

Barbe gazed straight at Tonty, her gray eyes 
firing like opals with enthusiasm. 

“ And my uncle La Salle at sixteen was al- 
ready planning his discoveries. Monsieur, I also 
have my plans. Many missionaries must be 
needed among the Indians.” 

“ You do not propose going as a missionary 
among the Indians, mademoiselle?” 

Barbe critically examined his smile. She 
evaded his query. 

“ Are the Indian women beautiful, Monsieur 
de Tonty? ” 

“They do not appear so to me, mademoiselle, 
though the Illinois are a straight and well-made 
race.” 

“ You must find it a grand thing to range that 
western country.” 

“ But in the midst of our grandeur the Iroquois 
threaten us even there. How would mademoi- 
selle like to mediate between these invaders and 
the timid Illinois, suspected by one tribe and 
threatened by the other; to carry the wampum 


FATHER HENNEPIN'S CHAPEL, I15 

belt of peace on the open field between two 
armies, and for your pains get your scalp-lock 
around the fingers of a Seneca chief and his 
dagger into your side?” 

“ Oh, monsieur ! ” whispered Barbe, flushing 
with the wild pinkness of roses on the plains, 
“ what amusements you do have in the great 
west ! And is it a castle on a mountain, that 
Fort St. Louis of the Illinois?” 

“ A stockade on a cliff, mademoiselle.” 

Tonty felt impelled to put himself nearer this 
delicate head set with fine small ears and quar- 
tered by the angles of the window-frame. When 
she meditated, her lashes and brows and aqui- 
line curves and gray tones flushing to rose were 
delightful to a wilderness-saturated man. But he 
held to his strict position as sentinel. 

“ Monsieur,” said Barbe, “ there is something 
on my mind which I will tell you. I was think- 
ing of the new world my uncle La Salle discov- 
ered, even before you came to Montreal. Now I 
think constantly of Fort St. Louis of the Illinois. 
Monsieur, I dream of it, — I go in long journeys 
and never arrive; I see it through clouds, and 
wide rivers flow between it and me ; and I am 
homesick. Yes, monsieur, that is the strangest 


Il6 THE STORY OF TON TV. 

thing, — I have cried of homesickness for Fort 
St Louis of the Illinois ! ” 

“ Mademoiselle,” said Tonty, his voice vibrat- 
ing, “there is a stranger thing. It is this, — that 
a man with a wretched hand of iron should sud- 
denly find within himself a heart of fire ! ” 

When this confession had burst from him he 
turned his back without apology, and Barbe’s 
forehead sunk upon the window-sill. 

Within the chapel, drops from the cracked 
roof still fell in succession, like invisible fingers 
playing scales along the boards. Outside was the 
roar of the landlocked sea, and the higher music 
of falling rain. Barbe let her furtive eyes creep 
up the sill and find Tonty’s large back on which 
she looked with abashed but gratified smUes. 

“ Mademoiselle,” he begged without turning, 
“ forgive what I have said.” 

“ Certainly, monsieur,” she responded. “What 
was it that you said? ” 

“ Nothing, mademoiselle, nothing.” 

“ Then, monsieur, I forgive you for saying 
nothing ” 

Tonty, in his larger perplexity at having made 
such a confession without La Salle’s leave, missed 
her sting. 


FATHER HENNEPIN'S CHAPEL. 


17 


Nothing more was said through the window. 
Barbe moved back, and the stalwart soldier kept 
his stern posture ; until La Salle, whose approach 
had been hidden by chimney and mission house, 
burst abruptly into view. As he came up, both 
he and Tonty opened their arms. Strong breast 
to strong breast, cheek touching cheek, spare 
olive-hued man and dark rich-blooded man 
hugged each other. 

Barbe’s convent lessons of embroidery and pious 
lore had included no heathen tales of gods or 
heroes. Yet to her this sight was like a vision 
of two great cloudy figures stalking across the 
world and meeting with an embrace. 


VI. 


LA SALLE AND TONTY. 

"11 THEN one of the men had been called from 
^ ’ the mission house to stand guard, they 
came directly into the chapel, preferring to talk 
there in the presence of Barbe. 

La Salle kissed her hand and her cheek, and 
she sat down before the fire, spreading the 
buffalo skin under her feet. 

As embers sunk and the talk of the two men 
went on, she crept as low as this shaggy carpet, 
resting arms and head upon the bench. The 
dying fire made exquisite color in this dismal 
chapel. 

“ The governor’s man, when he arrived to 
seize Fort St. Louis, gave you my letter of in- 
structions, Tonty?” 

“Yes, Monsieur de la Salle.” 

“ Then, my lad, why have you abandoned the 
post and followed me? You should have stayed 
to be my representative. They have Frontenac. 


LA SALLE AJVD TONTY. 


I 19 

Crevecoeur was ruined for* us. If they get St. 
Louis of the Illinois entirely into their hands 
they will claim the whole of Louisiana, these 
precious Associates.” 

Tonty, laying his sound arm across his com- 
mandant’s shoulder, exclaimed, “ Monsieur, I 
have followed you five hundred leagues to drag 
that rascal Jolycoeur back with me. He told at 
Fort St. Louis that this should be your last 
journey. ” 

La Salle laughed. 

“ I>et me tie Jolycoeur and fling him into my 
canoe, and I turn back at once. I can hold your 
claims on the Illinois against any number of gov- 
ernor’s agents. Take the surgeon Liotot in Joly- 
coeur’s place. Liotot came with me, anxious to 
return to France.” 

“Jolycoeur is no worse than the others, my 
Tonty, and he has had many opportunities. 
How often has my life been threatened ! ” 

“ He intends mischief, monsieur. If I had 
heard it before you set out, this journey need 
not have been made.” 

“ Tonty,” declared the explorer, “ I think 
sometimes I carry my own destruction within 
myself. I will not chop nice phrases for these 


20 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


hounds who continually ruin my undertakings by 
their faithlessness. If a man must keep patting 
the populace, he can do little else. But I am 
glad you overtook me here. My Tonty, if I 
had a hundred men like you I could spread 
out the unknown wilderness and possess it as 
that child possesses that hide of buffalo.” 

Though their undertakings were united, and 
the Italian had staked his fortune in the Nor- 
man’s ventures. La Salle always assumed, and 
Tonty from the first granted him, entire mas- 
tery of the West. Both looked with occupied 
eyes at Barbe, who felt her life enlarged by 
witnessing this conference. 

“ Monsieur, what aspect have affairs taken 
since you reached Fort Frontenac?” 

“ Worse, Tonty, than I dreaded when I left 
the Illinois. You know how this new governor 
stripped Fort Frontenac of men and made its 
unprotected state an excuse for seizing it, say- 
ing I had not obeyed the king’s order to main- 
tain a garrison. And you know how he and the 
merchants of Montreal have possessed them- 
selves of my seigniory here. They have sold 
and are still busy selling my goods from this 
post, putting the money into their pockets. I 


LA SALLE AND TONTY, 


I2I 


spent nearly thirty-five thousand francs improv- 
ing this grant of Frontenac. But worse than 
that, Tonty, they have ruined my credit both 
here and in France. Even my brother will no 
more lift a finger for me. The king is turned 
against me. The fortunes of my family — even 
the fortune of that child — are sucked down in 
my ruin,” 

Barbe noted her own bankruptcy with the un- 
concern of youth. Monsieur de Tonty’s face, 
when you looked up at it from a rug beside 
the hearth, showed w'ell its full rounded chin, 
square jaws, and high temples, the richness of 
its Italian coloring against the blackness of its 
Italian hair. 

“ They call me a dreamer and a madman, 
these fellows now in power, and have persuaded 
the king that my discoveries are of no account.” 

“ Monsieur,” exclaimed Tonty, “ do you re- 
member the mouth of the great river? 

Face glowed opposite face as they felt the 
log walls roll away from environing their vision. 

1 Relation of Henri de Tonty (cited in Margry, i). “Com- 
me cette riviere se divise en trois chenaux, M. de la Salle fut 
descouvrer celuy de la droite, je fus ^ celuy du mileu et le Sieur 
d’Autray ^ celuy de la gauche." 


22 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


It was no longer the wash of the Ontario they 
heard, but the voice of the Mexican gulf. The 
yellow flood of Mississippi poured out between 
marsh borders. Again discharges of musketry 
seemed to shake the morasses beside a naked 
water world, the Te Deum to arise, and the ex- 
plorer to be heard proclaiming, — 

“ In the name of the most high, mighty, in- 
vincible, and victorious Prince, Louis the Great, 
by the grace of God king of France and of 
Navarre, Fourteenth of that name, I, this ninth 
day of April, one thousand and six hundred 
and eighty-two, in virtue of the commission of 
his Majesty, which I hold in my hand and which 
may be seen by all whom it may concern, have 
taken and do now take, in the name of his 
Majesty and of his successors to the crown, 
possession of this country of Louisiana, the 
seas,’ harbors, ports, bays, adjacent straits, and 
all the nations, people, provinces, cities, towns, 
villages, mines, minerals, fisheries, streams, and 
rivers within the extent of the said Louisiana, 
from the mouth of the great river St. Louis, 
otherwise called the Ohio, as also along the 
river Colbert or Mississippi, and the rivers 
which discharge themselves thereinto, from its 


LA SALLE AND TONTY. 


123 


source beyond the country of the Nadoues- 
sioux, as far as its mouth at the sea, or Gulf 
of Mexico.” ^ 

“ Monsieur,” exclaimed Tonty, “ the plun- 
derers of your fortune cannot take away that 
discovery or blot out the world you then opened. 
And what is Europe compared to this vast coun- 
try? At the height of his magnificence Louis 
cannot picture to himself the grandeur of this 
western empire. France is but the palm of his 
hand beside it. It stretches from endless snow 
to endless heat ; its breadth no man may guess. 
Nearly all the native tribes affiliate readily with 
the French. We have to dispute us only the 
English who hold a little strip by the ocean, the 
Dutch with smaller holding inland, and a few 
Spaniards along the Gulf.” 

“ And all may be driven out before the arms 
of France,” exclaimed La Salle. “ These crawl- 
ing merchants and La Barre, — soldier, he calls 
himself! — see nothing of this. Every man for 
his own purse among them. But thou seest it, 
Tonty. I see it. And we are no knights on a 
crusade. Nor are we unpractised courtiers shred- 

1 Abridged from Francis Parkman’s version of La Salle’s 
proclamation. The Proces Verbal is a long document. 


124 


THE STORY OF TONTV 


ding our finery away on the briers of the wilder- 
ness. This western enterprise is based on geogra- 
phical facts. No mind can follow all the develop- 
ment of that rich land. It is an empire,” declared 
La Salle, striding between hearth and chancel- 
rail, unconscious that he lifted his voice to the 
rafters of a sanctuary, “ which Louis might drop 
France itself to grasp ! ” 

“ The king will be convinced of this. Monsieur 
de la Salle, when you again have his ear. When 
you have showed him what streams of commerce 
must flow out through a post stationed at the 
mouth of the Mississippi. France will then have 
a cord drawn half around this country.” 

“Tonty, if you could be commandant of every 
fort I build, navigator of every ship I set afloat, 
if you could live in every man who labors for 
me, if you could stand forever between those 
Iroquois wolves and the tribes we try to band 
for mutual protection, and at the same time, if 
you could always be at my side to ward off gun, 
knife, and poison, — you would make me the 
most successful man on earth.” 

“ I have travelled five hundred leagues to ward 
poison away from you, monsieur. And you 
laugh at me.” 



Tonty, if you could be commandant of every fort I build.” — Page 124. 








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[,A SALLE AND TONTY. 


27 


“ For your pains, I will dismiss Jolycoeur to- 
day, and take Liotot with me.” 

“ And will you come here as soon as you dis- 
miss him and let my men prepare your food? ” 

“ Willingly. Fort Frontenac, with my rights 
in it denied, is no halting place for me. To- 
morrow I set out again to France, and you to 
the fort on the Illinois. But, Tonty — ” 

La Salle’s face relaxed into tenderness as he 
laid his hands upon his friend’s shoulders. The 
Italian’s ardent temperament was the only agent 
which ever fused and made facile of tongue and 
easy of confidence that man of cold reserve 
known as La Salle. The Italian guessed what 
he had to say. They both glanced at Barbe 
and flushed. But the nebulous thought sur- 
rounding the name of Jeanne le Ber was never 
condensed to spoken word. 

Tonty’s sentinel opened the chapel door and 
broke up this council. He said an Indian stood 
there with him demanding to be admitted. 


VII. 


AN ADOPTION. 


“TT/’HAT does he want?” inquired Tonty. 

^ ’ “ He is determined to speak with you, 

Monsieur de Tonty, from what I can gather out 
of his words.” 

“ Let him wait in the mission house, then,” 
said Tonty, ‘‘until Monsieur de la Salle has 
ended his business.” 

“ I have ended,” said La Salle. “ It is time 
I ordered my men and baggage and canoes out 
of Fort Frontenac.” 

“ Monsieur, remain, and let an order from you 
be taken to the gate.” 

“ Some of those sulky fellows need my hand 
over them, Tonty. Besides, there are matters 
which must be definitely settled before 1 leave 
the fort. I have need to go myself, besides 
the obligation to deliver this runaway girl, on 
whom her uncle La Salle is^ always bringing 
penances,” 


AN ADOPTION 


129 


Barbe sprung up and put herself in the attitude 
of accompanying him. 

Mademoiselle,” said Tonty, “ the rain is still 
falling. If Monsieur de la Salle can carry this 
hide over you, it will be some protection.’* 

He took up the buffalo skin, and shook it to 
loosen any dust which might be clinging to the 
shag. 

“ Monsieur, you are very good,” she answered. 
“ But it is not necessary for me.” 

Mademoiselle cares very little about a wet- 
ting,” said La Salle. “ She was born to be a 
princess of the backwoods. Call in your Indian 
before we go, Tonty. He may have some news 
for us.” 

Tonty spoke to the sentinel, whose fingers 
visibly held the door, and he let pass a tall Iro- 
quois brave carrying such a bundle of rich furs 
as one of that race above the condition of squaw 
rarely deigned to lift. His errand was evidently 
peaceable. He paused and stood like a prince 
Neither La Salle nor Tonty remembered his 
face, though both felt sure he came from the 
mission village of friendly Iroquois near Fort 
Frontenac. 

“ What does my brother want? ” inquired La 
9 


30 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


Salle, with sympathy he never showed to his 
French subordinates. 

“ He waits to speak to his white brother with 
the iron hand,” answered the Iroquois. 

“ Have you brought us bad news? ” again in- 
quired La Salle. 

“ Good news.” 

“ What is it? ” 

“ It is only to my brother with the iron hand.” 

“ Can you not speak in the presence of Mon- 
sieur de la Salle? ” demanded Tonty. 

With exquisite reserve the Indian stood silent, 
waiting the conditions he needed for the delivery 
of his message. 

“ It is nothing which concerns me,” said La 
Salle to Tonty. He prepared to stalk into the 
weather with Barbe. 

Tonty spoke a few words to the waiting sav- 
age, who heard without returning any sign, and 
then followed Barbe, stretching the buffalo hide 
above her head. When La Salle observed this 
he failed to ridicule his lieutenant, but took one 
side of the shaggy canopy in his own hold. It 
was impossible for the girl to go dry-shod, but 
Tonty directed her way over the best and firmest 
ground. They made a solemn procession, for 


A^V ADOPTION. 


I3I 

not a word was spoken. When they came to 
the fortress gate, Tonty again bestowed the robe 
around her as he had done when she entered the 
chapel, and stood bareheaded while Barbe — 
whispering “Adieu, monsieur” — passed out of 
his sight. 

“ I have thought of this, Tonty,” said La Salle 
as he entered ; “ when she is a few years older 
she shall come to the fort on the Illinois, if I 
again reap success.” 

“ Monsieur de la Salle, I am bound to tell you 
it will be dangerous for me ever to see made- 
moiselle again.” 

“ Monsieur de Tonty,” responded the explorer 
with his close smile, “ I am bound to tell you 
I think it will be the safest imaginable arrange- 
ment for her.” 

The gate closed behind him, and Tonty car- 
ried back an exhilarated face to the waiting 
Iroquois. 

He entered Father Hennepin’s chapel again, 
and the Indian followed him to the hearth. 

They stood there, ready for conference, the 
small black savage eye examining Tonty’s face 
with open approval. 

“ Now let me have your message,” said the 


132 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


Italian. “ Have I ever seen you before? What 
is your name? ” 

“ Sanomp,” answered the Iroquois. “ My 
white brother with the iron hand has not seen 
me before.” 



He spread open on the bench Barbe had oc- 
cupied a present of fine furs and dried meat. 

“ Why does my brother bring me these 
things?” inquired Tonty, realizing as he looked 
at the gift how much of this barbarian’s wealth 
was bestowed in such an offering. 

“Listen,” said Sanomp.^ He had a face of 

^ Sanomp was suggested to the romancer by La Salle’s faith- 
ful Shawanoe follower, Nika, and an Indian friend and brother 
in “ Pontiac.” 


AN ADOPTION. 


133 


benevolent gravity, — the unhurried, sincere face 
of man living close to Nature. “ It is a chief of the 
Seneca tribe who speaks to my white brother.” 

“I have met a chief of the Seneca tribe be- 
fore,” remarked Tonty, smiling. “ It was in the 
country of the Illinois, and he wrapped my scalp- 
lock around his fingers.” 

Sanomp smiled, too, without haste, and con- 
tinued his story. 

“ I left my people to live near the fort of my 
French brothers because it was told me the man 
with a hand of iron was here. When I came 
here the man' with a hand of iron was gone. So 
I waited for him. Our lives are consumed in 
waiting for the best things. Five years have I 
stood by the mouth of Cataraqui. And this 
morning the man with a hand of iron passed 
before my face.” 

He spoke a mixture of French and Iroquois 
which enabled Tonty to catch his entire meaning. 

“ But this hancj could not betray me from the 
lake, to eyes that had never seen me before,” 
objected the Italian. 

Advancing one foot and folding his arms in 
the attitude of a narrator, the Indian said, — 

“ Listen. At that time of life when a young 


34 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


Iroquois retires from his tribe to hide in the woods 
and fast until his okie^ is revealed to him, four 
days and four nights the boy Sanomp lay on 
the ground, rain and dew, moonlight and sun- 
light passing over him. The boy Sanomp 
looked up, for an eagle dropped before his eyes. 
He then knew that the eagle was his okie, and 
that he was to be a warrior, not a hunter or 
medicine-man. But the eagle dropped before 
the feet of a soldier the image of my white 
brother, and the soldier held up a hand of 
yellow metal. The boy heard a voice coming 
from the vision that sai*d to him, ‘ Warrior, this 
is thy friend and brother. Be to him a friend 
and brother. After thou hast seven times fol- 
lowed the war path go and wait by the mouth 
of Cataraqui until he comes.’ So when I had 
seven times followed the war path I came, and 
my brother being passed by, I waited.” 

Tonty’s square brown Italian face was no 
more sincere than the redder aquiline visage 
fronting him and telling its vision. 

My brother Sanomp comes in a good time,” 
he remarked. 

1 Guardian Manitou. See Introduction to “Jesuits in North 
America.” 


AN ADOPTION. 


135 


The Iroquois next took out his peace pipe 
and pouch of tobacco. While he filled the 
bowl and stooped for an ember, Tonty stripped 
the copper hand of its glove. He held it up 
before Sanomp as he received the calumet in 
the other. An aboriginal grunt of strong satis- 
faction echoed in the chapel. 

“Hand of yellow metal,” said Sanomp. 

Tonty gravely smoked the pipe and handed 
it back to Sanomp. Sanomp smoked it, shook 
the ashes out and put it away. 

Thus was the ceremony of adoption finished. 
Without more talk, the red friend and brother 
turned from his white friend and brother and 
went back to his own world. 


viir. 


TEGAHKOUITA. 

J^ARBE ran breathless up the stairway, glad 
to catch sight of her uncle the Abb6 so 
occupied at the lower hearth that he took no 
heed of her return. 

She had counted herself the only woman in 
Fort Frontenac, yet she found a covered figure 
standing in front of the chamber door next her 
own. 

Though Barbe had never seen Catharine Te- 
gahkouita^ she knew this must be the Iroquois 
virgin who lived a hermit life of devotion in a 
cabin at Lachine, revered by French and Indians 
alike. How this saint had reached Fort Fron- 
tenac or in whose behalf she was exerting her- 
self Barbe could not conjecture. Tegahkouita 

^ The romancer differs from the historian — Charlevoix, 
tome 2 — who records that /Catharine Tegahkouita died in 
1678. 


TEGAHKOUITA. 


137 


had interceded for many afflicted people and 
her prayers were much sought after. 

The Indian girl kept her face entirely cov- 
ered. No man knew that it was comely or 
even what its features were like. The chroni- 
cler tells us when she was a young orphan 
beside her uncle’s lodge-fire her eyes were too 
weak to bear the light of the sun, and in this 
darkness began the devotion which distin- 
guished her life. What was first a necessity, 
became finally her choice, and she shut her- 
self from the world. 

To Barbe, Tegahkouita was an object of re- 
ligious awe tempered by that criticism in which 
all young creatures secretly indulge. She sat 
on the bench as if in meditation, but her eyes 
crept up and down that straight and motion- 
less and blanket-eclipsed presence. She knew 
that Tegahkouita was good ; was it not told of 
the Indian girl that she rolled three days in a 
bed of thorns, and that she often walked bare- 
footed in ice and snow, to. discipline her body? 
She was not afraid of Tegahkouita. But she 
wished somebody else would come into the 
room who could break the saint’s death-like 
silence. Sainthood was a very safe condition. 


38 


THE STORY OF TON TV. 


but Barbe found it impossible to admire the 
outward appearance of a living saint. 

La Salle had stopped at the barracks to order 
out his men, and Colin who had taken to that 
part of the fort for amusement, watched their 
transfer with much interest. 

Wind was conquering rain. It blew keenly 
from the southwest, and sung at the corners of 
Frontenac, whirling dead leaves like fugitive 
birds into the area of the fort. La Salle’s men 
turned out of their quarters with reluctance to 
exchange safety and comfort for exposure and 
a leaky camp. The explorer stood and saw 
them pass before him bearing their various bur- 
dens, excepting one man who slouched by the 
door of the bakehouse as if he had stationed 
himself there to see that they passed in order 
out of the gate. 

“ Come here, you Jolycneur,” called La Salle, 
lifting his finger. 

Jolycoeur, savagely hairy, approached with 
that look of sulky menace La Salle never 
appeared to see in his servants. 

“Where is your load of goods.?” inquired 
the e: plorer. 

Jolycoeur lifted a quick look, and dropping it 



Come here, you Jolycoeur,’ called La Salle.” — Page 








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Elinor* 


r . . . 

^i;>> -r iS-jM' '.'’^ . afe. t^fciss»si 

_ i , iW 



TEGAHJCOUITA. 


I4I 

again, replied, “ Sieur de la Salle, I was waiting 
for the cook to hand me out the dishes you 
ordered against you came back.” 

La Salle e^camined him through half-shut 
eyes. It was this man’s constant duty to 
prepare his food. Tonty and his brother Jean 
had so occupied his morning that he had 
found no time for eating. A man inured to 
hardships can fast with very little thought about 
the matter, but he decided if Jolycoeur had not 
yet handled this meal he might hazard some 
last service from a man who had missed so 
many opportunities. 

” Did you cook my breakfast? ” he inquired. 

Sieur de la Salle, I dared not put my nose in 
the bakehouse. This cook is the worst man in 
Fort Frontenac.” 

The cook appearing with full hands in his door. 
La Salle said to Jolycoeur, “ Carry those platters 
into the lodge,” and he watched the minutest 
action of the man’s elbows, walking behind him 
into the lower apartment of the dwelling. A 
table stood there on which Jolycoeur began to 
arrange the dishes with surly carelessness. 

The explorer forgot him the moment they 
entered, for two people occupied this room in 


142 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


close talk. Challenging whatever ill Jacques le 
Ber and the Abbe Cavelier had prepared, La 
Salle advanced beyond the table with the chill 
and defiant bearing natural to him. 

“Monsieur le Ber and I have been discussing 
this alliance you are so anxious to make with his 
family,” spoke the Abb^. 

The explorer met Le Ber’s face full of that tri- 
umphant contempt which men strangely feel for 
other men who have fallen and become stepping- 
stones of fortune to themselves. He turned away 
without answer, and began to eat indifferently 
from the dishes Jolycceur had left ready, stand- 
ing beside the table while he ate. 

“ If Jacques le Ber were as anxious for the 
marriage as yourself, — but I told you this morn- 
ing, my brother La Salle, what madness it must 
seem to all sane men, — it could not be arranged. 
His daughter hath refused to see you.” 

“ My thanks are due to my brother the Abbe 
for his nice management of all my affairs,” 
sneered La Salle. “ I comprehend there is noth- 
ing which he will not endeavor to mar for me. 
It surely is madness which induces a man against 
all experience to confide in his brother.” 

Jean Cavelier replied with a shrug and a spread 


TEGAHKOUITA. 


143 


of the hands which said, “ In such coin of grati- 
tude am I always paid.” 

“ Sieur de la Salle,” volunteered Le Ber, rising 
and coming forward with natural candor, “ it is 
not so long ago that your proposal would have 
made me proud, and the Abbe hath not ill 
managed it now. Monsieur, I wish my girl to 
marry. I have been ready for any marriage she 
would accept She has indeed shown more lik- 
ing for you than for any other man in New 
France. Monsieur, I would far rather have her 
married than bound to the life she leads. But if 
you were in a position to marry, Jeanne refuses 
your hand.” 

“ Has she said this to you?” inquired La Salle. 

“ I have not seen her to-day,” replied Le Ber. 
“ She has the Iroquois virgin Tegahkouita with 
her. I brought Tegahkouita here because she 
was besought for some healing in our Iroquois 
lodges near the fort.” 

Jacques le Ber stopped. But La Salle calmly 
heard him thus claim everything pertaining to 
Fort Frontenac. 

“We must do what we can to hold these un- 
stable Indians,” continued Le Ber. “Monsieur, 
before I could carry your proposal to Jeanne, 


144 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


she sends me Tegahkouita, as if they had some 
holy contrivance for reading people’s minds. 
Your brother will confirm to you the words 
Tegahkouita brought.” 

“ Mademoiselle le Ber will pray for you 
always, my brother La Salle. But she refuses 
even to see you.” 

“ It is easy enough for Jeanne to put you in her 
prayers,” remarked the discontented father, “ she 
hath room enough there for all New France.” 

The man who had more than once sprung 
into the midst of hostile savages and carried 
their admiration by a word, now stood silent and 
musing. But his face expressed nothing except 
determination. 

“ You shall see her yourself,” Jacques le Ber 
exclaimed, wdth the shrewdness of a man holding 
present advantage, yet gauging fully his antago- 
nist’s force. You and I were once friends, Sieur 
de la Salle. I might obtain a worse match for 
my girl.” 

“ I will see her,” said La Salle, more in the 
manner of affirming his own wish than of accept- 
ing a concession. 

He mounted the stairs, with Le Ber behind 
him, the Abbe Cavelier following Le Ber. 


TEGAHKOUITA. 


145 


As the father expected, Tegahkouita stood 
as a bar in front of Jeanne’s chamber door. 
Slightly spreading her blanketed arms this Indian 
girl of peculiar gifts said slowly and melodiously 
in a voice tuned by much low-spoken prayer, 
“ Mademoiselle Jeanne le Ber says, ‘ Tell Sieur 
de la Salle I will pray for him always, but I must 
never see his face again.’ ” 

i 


IX. 


AN ORDEAL. 

HEN I have seen Mademoiselle le Ber,” 



La Salle replied to the blanket of 


Tegahkouita, “ I shall understand from herself 
what her wishes are in this matter.” 

“ Sieur de la Salle cannot see her,” spoke 
Tegahkouita. “ She hath no word but this, and 
she will not see Sieur de la Salle again.” 

“ I say he shall see her ! ” exclaimed the Mon- 
treal merchant, with asperity created by so 
many influences working upon his daughter. 
“ He may look upon her this minute ! ” 

Jeanne le Ber’s presence in Fort Frontenac 
scarcely surprised Barbe, so great was her 
amazement at the attitude of her uncle La Salle. 
That he should be suing to Le Ber’s daughter 
seemed as impossible as any rejection of his suit. 
She felt toward the saint she had pinched at 
convent that jealous resentment peculiar to 
women who desire to have the men of their 


A AT ORDEAL. 


147 


families married, yet are never satisfied with 
the choice those men make. Even Barbe, how- 
ever, considered it a sacrilegious act when Le 
Ber shook his daughter’s door and demanded 
admittance. 

Jeanne’s complete silence, like a challenge, 
drew out his imperative force. He broke 
through every fastening and threw the door wide 
open. 

The small, bare room, scarcely wider than its 
entrance, afforded no hiding-places. There was 
little to catch the eye, from rude berth to hooks 
in the ruder wall, from which the commandant’s 
clothing had so lately been removed. 

Jeanne, the focus of this small cell, had flown 
to its extremity. As the door burst from its 
fastenings, everybody in the outer room could 
see her standing against the wall with noble in- 
stinct, facing the breakers of her privacy, but 
without looking at them. Her eyes rested on 
her beads, which she told with rapid lips and 
fingers. A dormer window spread its back- 
ground of light around her head. 

The recoil of inaction which followed Le Ber s 
violence was not felt by Tegahkouita. With the 
swift silence of an Indian and the intuition of a 


48 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


devotee, she at once put herself in the sleeping 
cell, and kneeled holding up a crucifix before 
Jeanne. As this symbol of religion was lifted, 
Jeanne fell upon her knees. 

Le Ber had not intended to enter, but indigna- 
tion drove him on after Tegahkouita. He stood 
aside and did not approach his child, — a jeal- 
ous, remorseful, anxious, irritated man. 

La Salle could see Jeanne, though with giddy 
and indistinct vision. Her wool gown lay 
around her in carven folds, as she knelt like a 
victim ready for the headsman’s axe. 

One of the proudest and most reticent men 
who ever trod the soil of the New World was thus 
reduced to woo before his enemy and his kin- 
dred ; to argue against those unseen forces repre- 
sented by the Indian girl, and to fight death in 
his own body with every pleading respiration. 
For blindness was growing over his eyes. His 
lungs were tightened. When his back was turned 
in the room below, Jolycceur had mixed a dish 
for him. 

La Salle’s hardihood was the marvel of his fol- 
lowers. A body and will of electric strength 
carried him thousands of miles through ways 
called impassable. Defeat could not defeat him. 


AN ORDEAL. 


149 


But this struggle with Jeanne le Ber was harder 
than any struggle with an estranged king, harder 
than again bringing up fortune from the depths 
of ruin, harder than tearing his breath of life 
from the reluctant air. He reared himself 
against the chimney-side, pressing with palms 
and stretched fingers for support, yet maintain- 
ing a roused erectness. 

“ Jeanne ! ” he spoke ; and eyes less blind than 
his could detect a sinking of her figure at the 
sound, “ I have this to say.” 

With a plunging gait which terrified Barbe by 
its unnaturalness. La Salle attempted to place 
himself nearer the silent object he was to move. 
As he passed through the doorway he caught at 
the sides, and then stretched out and braced 
one palm against the wall. Thus propped he 
proceeded, articulating thickly but with careful 
exactness. 

“Jeanne, when I have again brought success 
out of failure, I shall demand you in marriage. 
Your father permits it.” 

Her trembling lips prayed on, and she gave 
no token of having heard him, except the tremor 
which shopk even the folds of her gown. 

Too proud to confess his peril and make its 


150 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


appeal to her, and suppressing before so many 
witnesses her tender name of Sainte, he labored 
on as La Salle the explorer with the statement 
of his case. 

“ Perhaps I cannot see you again for some 
years. I do not ask words — of acceptance now. 
It is enough — if you look at me.” 

La Salle leaned forward. His eyeballs ap- 
peared to swell and protrude as he strained sight 
for the slightest lifting of the veil before that 
self-restraining spirit. 

Barbe’s wailing suddenly broke all bounds in 
the outer room. “ My uncle the Abbe ! Look 
at my uncle La Salle! He cannot breathe — 
he is going to die 1 Somebody has poisoned 
or stabbed my uncle La Salle ! ” 

Jean Cavelier with lower outcry ran to help 
the explorer. But even a brother and a priest 
has his limitations. La Salle pushed him off. 

When Barbe saw this, she threw herself to the 
floor and hid her face upon the bench. Her 
kinsman and the hero of her childhood was held 
over the abyss of death in the hand of Jeanne le 
Ber, while those who loved him must set their 
teeth in silence. 

But neither this childish judge, nor the father 


AN ORDEAL. 


I5I 

watching for any slight motion of eyelids which 
might direct all his future hopes and plans, 
knew what sickening moisture started from every 
pore of Jeanne le Ber. Still she lifted her faint- 
ing eyes only as high as the crucifix Tegahkouita 
held before her. Compared to her duly as she 
saw it, she must count as nothing the life of the 
man she loved. 

The Indian girl’s weak sight had no plummet 
for the face of this greater devotee. Passionately 
white, its lips praying fast, it stared at the cruci- 
fix. Cold drops ran down from the dew which 
beaded temples and upper lip. Sieur de la Salle 
— Sieur de la Salle was dying, and asking her for 
a look ! The lifting of her eyelids, the least 
wavering of her sight, would sweep away the 
vows she had made to Heaven, and loosen her 
soul for its swift rush to his breast. To be the 
wife of La Salle ! Her mutter became almost 
audible as she slid the beads between her fingers. 
God would keep her from this deadly sin. 

The gigantic will of La Salle, become almost 
material and visible, fell upon her with a cry 
which must have broken any other endurance. 

Jeanne ! look at me now — you shall look at 
me now ! ” 


152 


THE STORY- OF TON TV. 


Hoarse shouts of battle never tingled through 
blood as did the voice of this isolated man. 

Jeanne’s lips twitched on ; she twisted her 
hands in tense knots against her neck, and her 
eyes maintained the level of the cross. 

Silence — that fragment of eternity — then 
filled up the room, submerging strained ears. 
There were remote sounds, like the scream of 
wind cut by the angles of Fort Frontenac; but 
no sound which pierced the silence between La 
Salle and Jeanne le Ber. 

He turned around and cast himself through 
the doorway with a lofty tread as if he were try- 
ing to mount skyward. The Abbe Cavelier ex- 
tended both arms and kept him from stumbling 
over the settle which Barbe was baptizing with 
her anguish. She looked up with the distorted 
visage of one who weeps terribly, and saw the 
groping explorer led to the staircase. His feet 
plunged in the descent. 

To this noise was added a distinct thud from 
Jeanne le Ber’s room as her head struck the 
floor. She lay relaxed and prostrate, and her 
father lifted her up. Before rising to his feet 
with her he passed his hand piteously across her 
bruised forehead. 



* 


“She twisted her hands in tense knots against her neck.” — 152, 







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X. 


HEMLOCK. 



Jolycceur a prisoner. 


J OLYCCEUR, lounging with his shoulders 
against the barrack wall, gave furtive atten- 
tion to La Salle as the explorer appeared within 
the fort. Even his eye was deceived by his 
master’s bearing in giving him the signal to 
approach. 

The wind was helpful to La Salle, but he 
only half met daylight and saw Jolycceur taking 
strange shapes. 

“ Go to Father Hennepin’s old mission house,” 
he slowly commanded, “ and send Monsieur de 
Tonty directly to me.” 


156 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


The man, not daring to disobey until he 
could take refuge in Fort Frontenac with the 
gates closed behind the explorer, went on this 
errand. 

“What ails Sienr de la Salle?” inquired the 
cook, coming out of his bakehouse to get this 
news of a sentinel. 

They both watched the Abbe Cavelier mak- 
ing vain efforts to get hold of his misdirected 
brother. 

“ Gone mad with pride,” suggested the sen- 
tinel. “ The less he prospers the loftier I have 
always heard he bears himself. Would the 
governor of New France climb the wind with a 
tread like that?” 

Outside the gate La Salle’s limbs failed. The 
laboring Abb6 then dragged him along, and it 
seemed an immense detour he was obliged to 
make to pass the extended foundation. 

“ Now you will believe my words which I 
spoke this morning concerning the peril we all 
stand in,” panted this sorely taxed brother. 
“ The Cavelier family is destroyed. My brother 
La Salle — Robert — my child ! Shall I give 
you absolution?” 

“Not yet,” gasped La Salle. 


HEMLOCK. 


157 

If you had ever taken my advice, this 
miserable end had not come upon you.” 

“ I am not ended,” gasped La Salle. 

Oh, my brother,” lamented Jean Cavelier, 
tucking up his cassock as he bent to the strain, 
“ I have but one consolation in my wretchedness. 
This is better for you than the marriage you 
would have made. What business have you to 
ally yourself with Le Ber? What business have 
you with marriage at all? For my part, I would 
object to any marriage you had in view, but Le 
Ber’s daughter was the worst marriage for you in 
New France. ’ 

“ Tonty ! ” gasped La Salle. With the swiftness 
of an Indian, Tonty was flying across the clear- 
ing. The explorer’s unwary messenger Jolycoeur 
he had left behind him bound with hide thongs 
and lying in Father Hennepin’s inner room. 

“ Yes, yonder comes your Monsieur de Tonty 
who so easily gave up your post on the Illinois,” 
panted the Abbd Cavelier. ** Like all your 
worthless followers he hath no attachment to 
your person.” 

“ There is more love in his iron hand,” La 
Salle’s paralyzing mouth flung out, than in any 
other living heart ! ” 


158 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


Needing no explanation from the Abb^, the 
commandant from Fort St. Louis took strong 
hold of La Salle and hurried him to the mission 
house. They faced the wind, and Tonty’s cap 
blew off, his rings of black hair flaring to a 
fierce uprightness. 

The surgeon ran out of the dwelling and met 
and helped them in, and thus tardily resistance 
to the poison was begun, but it had found its 
hardiest victim since the day of Socrates. 

Tonty’s iron hand brought out of Jolycoeur im- 
mediate confession of the poison he had used. 

In an age when most cunning and deadly 
drugs were freely handled, and men who would 
not shed blood thought it no sin to take enemies 
neatly oft the scene by the magic of a dish, 
Jolycoeur was not without knowledge of a plant 
called hemlock, growing ready to the hand of a 
good poisoner in the New World. 

Noon stood in the sky, half shredding va- 
pors, and lighting cool sparkles upon the lake. 
Afternoon dragged its mute and heavy hours 
westward. 

Men left the mission house and entered it 
again, carrying wood or waten 

The sun set in the lake, parting clouds before 


HEMLOCK. 


159 


his sinking visage and stretching his rays like 
long arms of fire to smite the heaving water. 

Twilight rose out of the earth and crept sky- 
ward, blotting all visible shore. Fort Frontenac 
stood an indistinct mass beside the Cataraqui, as 
beside another lake. Stars seemed to run and 
meet and dive in long ripples. The wash of 
water up the sand subsided in force as the wind 
sunk, leaving air space for that ceaseless tune 
breathed by a great forest. 

Overhead, from a port of cloud, the moon’s 
sail pushed out suddenly, less round than it had 
been the night before, and owning by such de- 
pression that she had begun tacking toward her 
third quarter. Fort and settlements again found 
their proportions, and Father Hennepin’s cross 
stood clear and fair, throwing its shadow across 
the mission house. 

Within the silent mission house warmth and 
redness were diffused from logs piled in the 
chimney. 

The Abbe Cavelier’s cassock rose and fell with 
that sleep which follows great anxiety and ex- 
haustion. He reclined against the lowest step of 
a broken ladder-way which once ascended from 
corner to loft. The men, except one who stood 


l60 THE STORY OF TONTY. 

guard outside in the shadow of the house, were 
asleep in the next room. 

La Salle rested before the hearth on some of 
the skins Tonty had received from his Indian 
friend and brother. Whenever the explorer 
opened his eyes he saw Tonty sitting awake on 
the floor beside him. 

Sleep,” urged La Salle. 

“ I shall not sleep again,” said Tonty, “ until I 
see you safely on your way toward France.” 

“ This has been worse than the dose of ver- 
digris I once, got.” 

“ Jolycoeur says he used hemlock,” responded 
Tonty. He accused everybody in New France 
of setting him on to the deed, but I silenced 
that.” 

“ I had not yet dismissed him, Tonty. The 
scoundrel hath claims on me for two years’ 
wages.” 

“He should have got his wages of me,” ex- 
claimed Tonty, “ if this proved your death. He 
should have as many bullets as his body could 
hold.” 

“Tonty, untie the fellow and turn him out and 
discharge his wages for me with some of the 
skins you have put under me.” La Salle rose 


HEMLOCK. 


l6l 


on his elbow and then sat up. His face was 
very haggard, but the practical clear eye domi- 
nated if. “ These fellows cannot balk me. I 
have lost all that makes life, except my friend. 
But I shall come back and take the great west 
yet! A man with a purpose cannot be killed, 
Tonty. He goes on. He must go on.’’ 



25oofe III. 


FORT ST. LOUIS OF THE ILLINOIS. 


1687 A. D. 


H 



I. 


IN AN EAGLE’S NEST. 



The Eagle’s Nest. 


“ I ^ORT Lewis is in the country of the Illinois 
and seated on a steep Rock about two 
hundred Foot high, the River running at the 
Bottom of it. It is only fortified with Stakes and 
Palisades, and some Houses advancing to the 
Edge of the Rock. It has a very spacious Espla- 
nade, or Place of Arms. The Place is naturally 
strong, and might be made so by Art, with little 
expence. Several of the Natives live in it, in their 


1 66 the story of ton tv . 

Huts. I cannot give an Account of the Latitude 
it stands in, for want of proper Instruments to 
take an Observation, but Nothing can be pleas- 
anter; and it may be truly affirmed that the 
Country of the Illinois enjoys all that can make 
it accomplished, not only as to Ornament, but 
also for its plentiful Production of all Things 
requisite for the Support of human Life. 

“ The Plain, which is watered by the River, is 
beautified by two small Hills about half a League 
distant from the Fort, and those Hills are cover’d 
with groves of Oaks, Walnut-Trees, and other 
Sorts I have named elsewhere. The Fields are 
full of Grass, growing up very high. On the 
Sides of the Hills is found a gravelly Sort of 
Stone, very fit to make Lime for Building. 
There are also many Clay Pits, fit for making of 
Earthen Ware, Bricks, and Tiles, and along the 
River there are Coal Pits, the Coal whereof has 
been try’d and found very good.” ^ 

The young man lifted his pen from the paper 
and stood up beside a box in the storehouse 
which had served him as table, at the demand of 
a priestly voice. 

ijoutel. English Translation “from the editiofi just pub- 
lished at Paris, 1714 A. D.” 


IN AN EAGLE'S NEST 


167 


“Joutel, what are you writing there?” 

“ Monsieur the Abbe, I was merely setting 
down a few words about this Fort St. Louis of 
the Illinois in which we are sheltered. But my 
candle is so nearly burned out I will put the 
leaves aside.” 

“You were writing nothing else? ” insisted La 
Salle’s brother, setting his shoulders against the 
storehouse door. 

“ Not a word, monsieur.” 

The Abbe’s ragged cassock scarcely showed 
such wear as his face, which the years that had 
handled him could by no means have cut into 
such deep grooves or moulded into such ghastly 
hillocks of features. 

“ I cannot sleep to-night, Joutel,” said the 
Abbe Cavelier. 

“ I thought you were made very comfortable 
in the house,” remarked Joutel. 

“What can make me comfortable now?” 

They stood still, saying nothing, while a can- 
dle waved its feeble plume with uncertainty over 
its marsh of tallow, making their huge shadows 
stagger over log-w'all or floor or across piled 
merchandise. One side of the room was filled 
with stacked buffalo hides, on which Joutel, 


i68 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


nightly, took the complete rest he had earned by 
long tramping in southern woods. 

He rested his knuckles on the box and looked 
down. A Norman follower of the Caveliers, he 
had done La Salle good service, but between the 
Abbe and him lay a reason for silence. 

“ Tonty may reach the Rock at any time,’* ^ 
complained the Abbe to the floor, though his 
voice must reach Joutel’s ears. “ There is 
nothing I dread more than meeting' Tonty.” 

“ We can leave the Rock before Monsieur de 
Tonty arrives,” said Joutel, repeating a sugges- 
tion he had made many times. 

“ Certainly, without the goods my brother 
would have him deliver to me, without a canoe 
or any provision whatever for our journey ! ” 

“ They say here that Monsieur de Tonty led 
only two hundred Indians and fifty Frenchmen 
to aid the new governor in his war against the 
Iroquois,” observed Joutel. “ He may not come 
back at all.” 

I have thought of that,” the Abbe mused. 
*‘If Tonty be dead we are indeed wasting our 
time here, when we -ought to be well on our 

^ “ Le Rocher,” this natural fortress was commonly called by 
the French. See Charlevoix. 



0 


Joutel, what are you writiu" there ? ’’ — Paf;e i6q. 
















IN AN EAGLE'S NEST. 


71 


way to Quebec, to say naught of the voyage to 
France. But this fellow in charge of the Rock 
refuses to honor my demands without more 
authority.” 

“ He received us most kindly, and we have 
been his guests a month,” said Joutel. 

“ I would be his guest no longer than this 
passing night if my difficulties were solved,” said 
the Abbe. “ For there is even Colin’s sister 
to torment me. I know not where she is, — 
whether in Montreal or in the wilderness be- 
tween Montreal and this fort. If I had taken 
her back with Colin to France, she would now 
be safe with my mother. There was another 
evidence of my poor brother’s madness ! He 
was determined Mademoiselle Cavelier should 
be sent out to Fort St. Louis. When he sailed 
on ’that last great voyage, he sat in one of the 
ships the king furnished him and in the last lines 
he wrote his mother refused to tell her his desti- 
nation ! And at the same time he wrote instruc- 
tions to the nuns of St. Joseph concerning the 
niece whose guardian he never was. She must 
be sent to Fort St. Louis at the first safe oppor- 
tunity ! She was to have a grant in this country 
to replace her fortune which he had used. And 


1/2 


THE STORY OF TON TV. 


this he only told me during his fever at St. 
Domingo on the voyage.” 

Joutel folded and put away his notes. The 
Abbe s often repeated complaints seldom stirred 
a reply from him. Though on this occasion he 
thought of saying, — 

“ Monsieur de Tonty may bring news of her 
from Montreal.” 

“ You understand, Joutel,” exclaimed the Abbe, 
approaching the candle, “ that it is best, — that 
it is necessary not to tell Tonty what we know? ” 

“ I have understood what you said. Monsieur 
the Abbe.” 

“ You are the only man who gives me anxiety. 
All the rest are willing to keep silence. Is it not 
my affair? I wish you would cease writing your 
scraps. It irritates me to come into this store- 
house and find you writing your scraps.” He 
looked severely at the young man, who leaned 
against the box making no further promise 
or reply. Then seizing the candle, the Abb^ 
stepped to a bed made of bales, where, wrapped 
in skins and blankets, young Colin Cavelier lay 
uttering the acknowledgement of peaceful sleep. 
Another boy lay similarly wrapped on the floor 
beside him. 


IN AN EAGLE’S NEST. 


73 


The priest’s look at these two was brief. He 
went on to the remaining man in the room, a 
hairy fellow, lying coiled among hides and 
pressed quite into a corner. The man ap- 
peared unconscious, emitting his breath in short 
puffs. 

Abbe Cavelier gazed upon him with shudders. 

The over-taxed candle flame stooped and ex- 
pired, the scent of its funeral pile rising from a 
small red point in darkness. 


II. 


THE FRIEND AND BROTHER. 

HILE Abbe Cavelier stood in the store- 



^ ’ house, Tonty, a few miles away, was 
setting his camp around a spring of sulphur 
water well known to the hunters of St. Louis. 
The spring boiled its white sand from un- 
measured depths at the root of an oak, and 
spread a pool which slipped over its barrier in 
a thin stream to the Illinois. 

Though so near his fortress, Tonty and Grey- 
solon du Lhut, fresh from their victorious cam- 
paign with the governor of New France against 
the Iroquois, thought it not best to expose their 
long array of canoes in darkness on the river. 
They had with them ^ women and children, — 

1 “ On his return he brought back with him the families of 
a number of French immigrants, soldiers, and traders. This 
arrival of the wives, sisters, children, and sweethearts of some 
of the colonists, after years of separation, was the occasion of 
great rejoicing.” — John Moses’ History of Illinois. 


THE FRIEND AND BROTHER. 


175 ' 


fragments of families, going under their escort 
to join the colony at Fort St. Louis. 

Du Lhut’s army of Indians from the upper 
lakes had returned directly to their own villages 
to celebrate the victory; but that unwearied 
rover himself, with a few followers, had dragged 
his gouty limbs across portages to the Illinois, 
to sojourn longer with Tonty. 

Their camp was some distance from the river, 
up an alluvial slope of the north shore. Op- 
posite, a line of cliffs, against which the Illinois 
washes for miles, caught the eye through dark- 
ness by its sandy glint ; and not far away, on the 
north side of the river, that long ridge known as 
Buffalo Rock made a mass of gloom. 

Dependent and unarmed colonists were placed 
in the centre of the camp. Tonty himself, with 
his usual care on this journey, had helped to 
pitch a tent of blankets and freshly cut poles 
for Mademoiselle Barbe Cavelier and the offi- 
cer’s wife, who clung to her in the character of 
guardian. The other immigrants understood 
and took pleasure in this small temporary home, 
built nightly for a girl whose proud silence 
among them they forgave as the caprice of 
beauty. The wife of the officer Bellefontaine, 


76 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


on her part, rewarded Tonty by attaching her 
ceaseless presence to Barbe. She was a timid 
woman, very small-eyed and silent, who took 
refuge in Barbe’s larger shadow, and found it 
convenient for an under-sized duenna whose 
husband was so far in the wilds. 

Mademoiselle Cavelier was going to Fort 
St. Louis at the first opportunity since her 
uncle La Salle’s request, made three years 
before. 

At this time it was not known whether 
La Salle had succeeded or failed in his last 
enterprise. He had again convinced the king. 
His seigniories and forts were restored to him, 
and governor’s agents and associates driven out 
of his possessions. He had sailed from France 
with a fleet of ships, carrying a large colony to 
plant at the Mississippi’s mouth. His brother 
the Abbe Cavelier, two nephews, priests, arti- 
sans, young men, and families were in his com- 
pany, which altogether numbered over four 
hundred people. 

Fogs or storms, or dogged navigators dis- 
agreeing with and disobeying him, had robbed 
him of his destination ; for news came back 
to France, by a returning ship, of loss and 


THE FRIEND AND BROTHER. 177 

disaster and a colony dropped like castaways 
on some inlet of the Gulf. 

The evening meal was eaten and sentinels were 
posted. Even petulant children had ceased to 
fret within the various enclosures. Indians and 
Frenchmen lay asleep under their canoes which 
they had carried from the river, and by prop- 
ping with stones or stakes at one side, converted 
into low-roofed shelters. 

Barbe’s tent was beside the spring near the 
camp-fire. She could, by parting overlapped 
blanket edges, look out of her cloth house into 
those living depths of bubbling white sand, so 
like the thoughts of young maids. Two or 
three fallen leaves, curled into quaint craft, slid 
across the pool’s surface, hung at its barrier, 
and one after the other slipped over and dis- 
appeared along the thread of water. A hollow 
of light was scooped above the camp-fire, out- 
side of which darkness stood an impenetrable 
rind, for the sky had all day been thickened by 
clouds. 

The Demoiselle Bellefontaine, tucked neatly 
as a mole under her ridge, rested from her 
fears in sleep; and Barbe made ready to lie 
down also, sweeping once more the visible 


12 


178 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


world with a lingering eye. She saw an Indian 
creeping on hands and knees toward Tonty’s 
lodge. He entered darkness the moment she saw 
him. The girl arose trembling and put on her 
clothes. She had caught no impression of his 



She saw an Indian creeping. 


tribe; but if he were a warrior of the camp, 
his crawling so secretly must threaten harm to 
Tonty. She did not distinctly know what she 
ought to do, except warn Monsieur de Tonty. 

But on a sudden the iron-handed comman- 
dant ran past her tent, shouting to his men. 
There was a sound like the rushing of bees 
through the air, and horrible faces smeared 
with paint, tattooed bodies, and hands brandish- 
ing weapons closed in from darkness; the 
men of the camp rose up with answering yells. 


THE FRIEND AND BROTHER. 


179 


and the flash and roar of muskets surrounded 
Barbe as if she were standing in some night- 
mare world of lightning and thunder. She 
heard the screams of children and frightened 
mothers. She saw Tonty in meteor rushes 
rallying men, and striking down, with nothing 
but his iron hand, a foe who had come to quar- 
ters too close for fire-arms. Indian after Indian 
fell under that sledge, and a cry of terror in 
Iroquois French, which she could understand, 
rose through the whoop of invasion, — 

“ The Great-Medicine-Hand ! The Great- 
Medicine-Hand ! ” 

Brands were caught from the fire and thrown 
like bolts, sparks hissing as they flew. Her 
tent was overturned and she fell under it with 
the Demoiselle Bellefontaine, who uttered muf- 
fled squeals. 

When Barbe dragged her companion out of 
the midst of poles, all the hurricane of action 
had passed by. Its rush could be heard down 
the slope, then the splashing of bodies and 
tumultuous paddling in the river. Guns yet 
flashed. She heard Frenchmen and Illinois 
running with their canoes down to the water to 
give chase, Farther and farther away sounded 


l 80 THE STORY OF TON TV. 

the retreat, and though women and children 
continued to make outcry, Barbe could hear 
no groans. 

The brands of the fire were still scattered, but 
hands were busy collecting and bringing them 
back, — processions of gigantic glow-worms meet- 
ing by dumb appointment in a nest of hot ashes 
and trodden logs. All faces were drowned in 
the dark until these re-united embers fitfully 
brought them out. A crowd of frightened im- 
migrants drew around the blaze, calling each 
other by name, and demanding to know who 
was scalped. 

Barbe saw nothing better to do than to stand 
beside her wrecked tent, and the Demoiselle 
Bellefontaine burrowed closely to her, uttering 
distressed noises. 

The pursuers presently returned and quieted 
the camp. Tonty had not lost a man, though a 
few were wounded. The attacking party carried 
off with them every trace of their repulse. 

Overturned lodges were now set straight, and 
as soon as Bellefontaine’s wife found hers inhabi- 
table she hid herself within it. But Barbe waited 
to ask the busy commandant, — 

Monsieur de Tonty, have you any wound? ” 


THE FRIEND AND BROTHER. l8l 

*‘No, mademoiselle,” he answered, pausing to 
breathe himself, and seize upon an interview so 
unusual. “ I hope you have not been greatly 
disturbed. The Iroquois are now entirely driven 
off, and they will not venture to attack us 
again.” 

With excited voice Barbe assured him she had 
remained tranquil through the battle. 

“ We do not call this a battle,” laughed Tonty. 
“ These were a party of Senecas, who rallied after 
defeat and have followed us to our own country. 
They tried to take the camp by surprise, and 
nearly did it; but Sanomp crept between senti- 
nels and waked me.” 

“ Who is Sanomp, monsieur? ” 

“ Do you remember the Iroquois Indian who 
came to Father Hennepin’s chapel at Fort 
Frontenac? ” 

“ Yes, monsieur ; was he among these 
Senecas? ” 

“ The Senecas are his tribe of the Iroquois, 
mademoiselle. He was among them; but he 
has left his people for my sake. These Indians 
have visions and obey them. He said the time 
had come for him to follow me.” 

“ Sanomp was then the Indian I saw creeping 


1 82 THE STORY OF TONTY. 

toward your tent. Did he fight against his own 
people? ” 

“ No, mademoiselle. While Du Lhut and I 
flew to rouse the camp, he sat doggedly down 
where he found me. This was a last chance for 
the Senecas. We are so near Fort St. Louis, 
and almost within shouting distance of our 
Miamis on Buffalo Rock. Such security makes 
sentinels careless. Sanomp crept ahead of the 
others and whispered in my ear, taking his 
chance of being brained before I understood 
him. He has proved himself my friend and 
brother, mademoiselle, to do this for me, and 
moreover to bear the shame of sitting crouched 
like a squaw through a fray.” 

“ Everybody loves and fears Monsieur de 
Tonty,” ^ observed Barbe, with sedate accent. 

Tonty breathed deeply. 

“ Am I an object of fear to you, mademoi- 
selle? Doubtless I have grown like a buffalo,” 
he ruminated. “ Perhaps you feel a natural aver- 
sion toward a man bearing a hand of iron.” 

“ On the contrary, it seemed a great conven- 
ience among the Indians,” murmured Barbe, 
and Tonty laughed and stood silent. 

1 “ He was loved and feared by all,” says St.-Cosme. 


THE FRIEND AND BROTHER. 


183 


The camp was again settling to rest, and fewer 
swarming figures peopled the darkness. Wind- 
ing and aspiring through new fuel the camp-fire 
once more began to lift its impalpable pavilion, 
and groups sat around it beneath that canopy of 
tremulous light, with rapid talk and gesture re- 
peating to each other their impressions of the 
Senecas’ attack. 

“ Mademoiselle,” said Tonty, lifting his left 
hand to his bare head, for he had rushed hat- 
less into action, “ good-night. The guards are 
doubled. You are more secure than when you 
lay down before.” 

“ Good-night, monsieur,” replied Barbe, and he 
opened her tent for her, when she turned back. 

” Monsieur de Tonty,” she whispered swiftly, 
“ I have had no chance during this long journey, 
— for with you alone would I speak of it, — to 
demand if you believe that saying against your- 
self which they are wickedly charging to my 
uncle La Salle?”- 

“ Mademoiselle, how could I believe that Mon- 
sieur de la Salle said in France he wished to be 
rid of me? One laughs at a rumor like that.” 

“ The tales lately told about his madness are 
more than I can bear.” 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


184 

“ Mademoiselle, Monsieur de la Salle’s enemies 
always called his great enterprises madness.” 

“ Can you imagine where he now is, Mon- 
sieur de Tonty? ” 

“ Oh, heavens ! ” Tonty groaned. “ Often 
have I said to myself, — Has Monsieur de la Salle 
been two years in America, and I have not 
joined him, or even spoken with him? It is not 
my fault ! As soon as I believed he had reached 
the Gulf of Mexico I descended the Mississippi. 
I searched all those countries, every cape and 
every shore. I demanded of all the natives 
where he was, and not one could tell me a word. 
Judge of my pain and my dolor.” ^ 

They stood in such silence as could result from 
two people’s ceasing to murmur in the midst of 
high-pitched voices. 

“ Monsieur de Tonty,” resumed Barbe, “ do 
you remember Jeanne le Ber?” 

“ Mademoiselle, I never saw her.” 

“ She refused my uncle La Salle at Fort Fron- 
tenac, and I detested her for it. In the new 
church at Montreal she has had a cell made be- 
hind the altar. There she prays day and night. 

1 Tonty ’s words in “ Dernieres Decouvertes dans L’Amerique 
Septentrional.” 


THE FRIEND AND BROTHER. 185 

She wears only a blanket, but the nun who 
feeds her says her face is like an angel’s. Mon- 
sieur, Jeanne le Ber fell with her head bumping 
the floor, — and I understood her. She had a 
spirit fit to match with my uncle La Salle’s. She 
thought she was right. I forgave her then, for I 
know, monsieur, she loved my uncle La Salle.” 

When Barbe had spoken such daring words 
she stepped inside her tent and dropped its 
curtain. 


III. 


HALF-SILENCE. 



HE October of the Mississippi valley — full 


^ of mild nights and mellow days and the 
shine of ripened corn — next morning floated all 
the region around Fort St. Louis in silver vapor. 
The two small cannon on the Rock began to roar 
salutes as soon as Tonty’s line of canoes appeared 
moving down the river. 

To Barbe this was an enchanted land. She 
sat by the Demoiselle Bellefontaine and watched 
its populous beauty unfold. Blue lodge-smoke 
arose everywhere. Tonty pointed out the Shaw- 
nee settlement eastward, and the great town of 
the Illinois northwest of the Rock, — a city of 
high lodges shaped like the top of a modern 
emigrant wagon. He told where Piankishaws 
and Weas might be distinguished, how many 
Shawanoes were settled beyond the ravine back 
of the Rock, and how many thousand people, 
altogether, were collected in this principality 
of Monsieur de la Salle. 


HALF-SILENCE. 


187 


A castellated cliff with turrets of glittering 
sandstone towered above the boats, but beyond 
that, — round, bold, and isolated, its rugged 
breasts decked with green, its base washed by 
the river, — the Rock^ of St. Louis waited what- 
ever might be coming in its eternal leisure. 
Frenchmen and Indians leaped upon earthworks 
at its top and waved a welcome side by side, the 
flag of France flying above their heads. 

At Barbe’s right hand lay an alluvial valley 
bordered by a ridge of hills a mile away. Along 
this ancient river-bed Indian women left off 
gathering maize from standing stalks, and ran 
joyfully crying out to receive their victorious 
warriors. Inmates poured from the settlement 
of French cabins opposite and around the Rock. 
With cannon booming overhead, Tonty passed its 
base followed by the people who were to ascend 
with him, and landed west of it, on a sandy strip 
where the voyager could lay his hand on that 
rugged fern-tufted foundation. Barbe and the 
Demoiselle Bellefontaine followed him along a 
path cut through thickets, around moss-softened 
irregular heights of sandstone, girdled in below 

1 Parkman states its actual height to be ,only a hundred and 
twenty-five feet. 


i88 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


and bulging out above, so that no man could 
obtain foothold to scale them. Gnarled tree-roots, 
like folds of snakes caught between closing strata, 
hung, writhed in and out. The path, under pine 
needles and fallen leaves, was cushioned with 
sand white as powdered snow. Behind the Rock, 
stretching toward a ravine, were expanses of this 
lily sand which looked fresh from the hands of 
the Maker, as if even a raindrop had never in- 
dented its whiteness. 

Three or four foot-holes were cut in the south- 
east flank of rock wall. An Indian ran down 
from above and flung a rope over to Tonty. He 
mounted these rocky stirrups first, helped by the 
rope, and knelt to reach back for Barbe and the 
Demoiselle Bellefontaine. The next ascent was 
up water-terraced rock to an angle as high as 
their waists. Here two more stirrups were cut in 
the rock. Ferns brushed their faces, and shrubs 
stooped over them. The heights were studded 
thick with gigantic trees half-stripped of leaves. 
Rust-colored lichens and lichens hoary like 
blanched old men, spread their great seals on 
stone and soil. 

Wide water-terraced steps, looking as if cut for 
a temple, ascended at last to the gate. Through 


HALF-SILENCE. 


189 

this Tonty led his charge upon a dimpled sward, 
for care had been taken to keep turf alive in Fort 
St. Louis. 

Recognition and joy were the first sensations 
of many immigrants entering, as the people they 
loved received them. But Barbe felt only deli- 
cious freedom in such a crag castle. There was 
a sound of the sea in pine trees all around. The 
top of the Rock was nearly an acre in extent. 
It was fortified by earthworks, except the cliff 
above the river, which was set with palisades and 
the principal dwellings of the fort. There were 
besides, a storehouse, a block-house, and several 
Indian lodges. But the whole space — so shaded 
yet so sunny, reared high in air yet sheltered 
as a nest — was itself such a temple of security 
that any buildings within it seemed an imperti- 
nence. The centre, bearing its flagstaff, was left 
open. 

Two priests, a Recollet and a Sulpitian, met 
Tonty and the girl he led in, the Sulpitian re- 
ceiving her in his arms and bestowing a kiss on 
her forehead. 

“ Oh, my uncle Abbe ! ” Barbe gasped with sur- 
prise. “Is Colin with you? Is my uncle La 
Salle here?” 


190 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


But Tonty, swifter than the Abbe’s reply, laid 
hold of the Recollet Father and drew him beside 
Abbe Cavelier, demanding without greeting or 
pause for courteous compliment, — 

“ Is Monsieur de la Salle safe and well? You 
both come from Monsieur de la Salle ! ” 

“ He was well when we parted from him,” re- 
plied the Abbe Cavelier, looking at a bunch of 
maiden-hair fern which Barbe had caught from a 
ledge and tucked in the bosom of her gown. 
“We left him on the north branch of the Trinity 
River, Monsieur de Tonty.” 

The Recollet said nothing, but kept his eyes 
fixed on his folded hands. Tonty, too eager to 
mark well both bearers of such news, demanded 
again impartially, — 

“ And he was well? ” 

“ He left us in excellent health, monsieur.” 

“ How glad I am to find you in Fort St. 
Louis ! ” exclaimed Tonty. “ This is the first 
direct message I have had from Monsieur de la 
Salle since he sailed from France. How many 
men are in your party? Have you been made 
comfortable? ” 

“ Only six, monsieur. We have been made 
quite comfortable by your officer Bellefontaine.” 


t 



“ And he was well ? ” — Page 192. 




HALF-SILENCE. 


193 


“ Monsieur the Abbe, where did Monsieur de 
la Salle land his colony? ” 

“ On a western coast of the Gulf, monsieur. 
It was most unfortunate. Ever since he has 
been searching for the Mississippi.” 

“While I searched for him. Oh, Fathers!” 
Tonty’s voice deepened and his swarthy joyful 
face set its contrast opposite two downcast 
churchmen, “nothing in Fort St. Louis is good 
enough for messengers from Monsieur de la 
Salle. What can I do for you? Did he send me 
no orders? ” 

• “ He did commit a paper to my hand, naming 
skins and merchandise that he would have de- 
livered to me, as well as a canoe and provisions 
for our journey to New France.” 

“ Come, let me see this paper,” demanded 
Tonty. “ Whatever Monsieur de la Salle or- 
ders shall be done at once; but the season is 
now so advanced you will not push on to New 
France until spring.” 

“ That is the very reason, Monsieur de Tonty, 
why we should push on at once. We have 
waited a month for your return. I leave Fort 
St. Louis with my party to-morrow, if you will 

so forward my wishes.” 

13 


194 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


“ Monsieur the Abbe, it is impossible ! You 
have yet told me nothing of all it is necessary 
for me to know touching Monsieur de la Salle.” 

“To-morrow,” repeated the Abbe Cavelier, 
“ I must set out at dawn, if you can honor my 
brother’s paper.” 

Tonty, with a gesture of his left hand, led 
the way to his quarters across the esplanade. 
As Barbe walked behind the Recollet Father, 
she wondered why he had given no answer to 
any of Tonty’s questions. 

Her brother advanced to meet her, and she 
ran and gave him her hands and her cheek 
to kiss. They had been apart four years, and 
looked at each other with scrutinizing gaze. 
He overtopped hqr by a head. Barbe expected 
to find him tall and rudely masculine, but there 
was change in him for which she was not 
prepared. 

“ My sister has grown charming,” pronounced 
Colin. “ Not as large as the Caveliers usually 
are, but like a bird exquisite in make and 
graceful motion.” 

“Oh, Colin, what is the matter?” demanded 
Barbe, with direct dart. “ I see concealment 
in your face ! ” 


HALF-SILENCE, 


195 


‘‘What do you see concealed? Perhaps you 
will tell me that.” He became mottled with 
those red and white spots which are the blood’s 
protest against the will. 

“ The Recollect Father did not answer a word 
to Monsieur de Tonty’s questions, Colin; and 
the voice of my uncle the Abbe sounded un- 
natural. Is there wicked power in those coun- 
tries you have visited to make you all come 
back like men half asleep from some drug?” 

“Yes, there is! ” exclaimed the boy; “ I hate 
that wilderness. When we are once in France 
I will never venture into such wilds again. 
They dull me until niy tongue seems dead.” 

“ And, Colin, you did leave my uncle La Salle 
quite well?” 

“ It was he who left us. He was in excellent 

« 

health the last time we saw him.” The boy 
spoke these words with precision, and Barbe 
sighed her relief 

“ For myself,” she said, “ I love this wild 
world. I shall stay here until my uncle La Salle 
arrives.” 

“ Our uncle the Abbe will decide that,” re- 
plied Colin. “ It is unfortunate that you left 
Montreal. Your only hope of staying here 


196 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


rests on the hard journey before us, and the 
risks we run of meeting winter on the way. I 
wish you had been sent to France. I wish we 
were all in France now.” Colin’s face relaxed 
wistfully. 

Two crows were scolding in the trees below 
them. Barbe felt ready to weep ; as if the 
tender spirit of autumn had stolen through her, 
as mists steal along the hills. She sat down on 
the grassy earthwork, and Colin picked some 
pine needles from a branch and stood silent 
beside her, chewing them. 

But those vague moods which haunt girlhood 
held always short dominion over Barbe. She 
was in close kinship with the world around, and 
the life of the fort began to occupy her. 

The Rock was like a small fair with its addi- 
tional inhabitants, who were still running about 
in a confusion of joyful noises. Children, de^ 
lighted to be freed from canoes at so bright a 
time of day, raced across the centre, or hid 
behind wigwam or tree, calling to each other. 
An Indian stalked across to the front of the 
Rock, and Barbe watched him reach out through 
an opening in the low log palisade. A platform 
was there built on the trunks of two leaning cedars. 


HALF-SILENCE. 


19; 


The Indian unwound a windlass and let down 
a bucket to the river below. She heard its 
distant splash and some of its resounding drips 
on the way up. Living in Fort St. Louis was 
certainly like living on a cloud. 

“ I will go into the officers’ house,” suggested 
Colin, “ and see how the Abbe’s demands are 
met by Monsieur de Tonty. We shall then 
know if we are to set out for Quebec to-morrow.” 


IV. 


A FfeTE ON THE ROCK.^ 

T7)ARBE did not object or assent. Youth 
shoves off any evil day by ignoring it, 
and Colin left her in lazy enjoyment of the 
populous place. 

The Demoiselle Bellefontaine approached to 
ask if she desired to come to the apartment 
the commandant reserved for her; but Barbe 
replied that she wished to sit there and amuse 
herself awhile longer with the novelty of Fort 
St. Louis. 

A child she had noticed on the journey 
brought her, as great treasure, a handful of 
flints and crumble-dust from the sandstone. 
They sorted the stuff on her knee, — fat-faced 
dark French child and young girl fine enough 
to be the sylvan spirit of the Rock. 

1 “ The joyous French held balls, gay suppers, and wine 
parties on the Rock.” — Old History of Illinois. 


A FkTE ON THE ROCK. 


199 


Mademoiselle Cavelier’s wardrobe was by no 
means equal to that gorgeous period in which 
she lived, being planned by her uncle the Abbe 
and executed by the frugal and exact hands of 
a self-denying sisterhood. But who can hide 
a girl’s supple slimness in a gown plain as a 
nun’s, or take the blossom-burnish off her face 
with colonial caps? Dark curls showed around 
her temples. Barbe’s aquiline face had received 
scarcely a mark since Tonty saw it at Fort 
Frontenac. The gentle monotonous restraint 
of convent life had calmed her wild impulses, 
and she was in that trance of expecting great 
things to come, which is the beautiful birthright 
of youth. 

^ While she was sorting arrow-head chips, her 
uncle came out of Tonty’s quarters and cast 
his eye about the open space in search of her. 
At his approach Barbe’s playmate slipped away, 
and the Abbe placed himself in front of her 
with his hands behind him. 

Barbe gave him a scanty look, feeling sure 
he came to announce the next day’s journey. 
This man, having many excellences, yet roused 
constant antagonism in his brother and the 
niece most like that brother. When he pro- 


200 


THE STORY OF TON TV. 


truded his lower lip and looked determined, 
Barbe thought if the sin could be set aside a 
plunge in the river would be better than this 
journey. 

“ I have a proposal for you, my child,” said the 
Abbe. “ It comes from Monsieur de Tonty. 
He tells me my brother La Salle encouraged 
him to hope for this alliance, and I must declare 
I see no other object my brother La Salle had 
in view when he sent you to Fort St. Louis. 
Monsieur de Tonty understands the state of your 
fortune. On his part, he holds this seigniory 
jointly with my brother, and the traffic he is 
able to control brings no mean revenue. It is 
true he lacks a hand. But it hath been well re- 
placed by the artificer, and he comes of an 
Italian family of rank.” 

Barbe’s head was turned so entirely away that 
the mere back of a scarlet ear was left to the 
Abbe. One hand clutched her lap and the other 
pulled grass with destructive fingers. 

“ Having stated Monsieur de Tonty’s case I 
will now state mine,” proceeded her uncle. “ I 
leave this fort before to-morrow dawn. I must 
take you with me or leave you here a bride. 
The journey is perilous for a small party and we 


A fMte on the rock. 


20T 


may not reach France until next year. And an 
alliance like this will hardly be found in France 
for a girl of uncertain fortune. Therefore I 
have betrothed you to Monsieur de Tonty, and 
you will be married this evening at vespers.” 



“ I have a proposal for you, my child.” 


“You have stated Monsieur de Tonty’s case, 
and you have stated yours,” said Barbe. “ I will 
now state mine. I will not be married to any 
man at a day’s notice.” 

“ May I ask what it is you demand, made- 
moiselle?” inquired the Abbe, with irony, “if 
you propose to re-arrange any marriage your 
relatives make for you.” 

“ I demand a week between the betrothal and 
the marriage.” 


202 


THE STORY OF TONTY, 


“ A week, mademoiselle ! ” her uncle laughed, 
“ We who set out must give winter a week’s 
start of us for such a whim ! You will be mar- 
ried to-night or you will return with me to 
France. I will now send Monsieur de Tonty to 
you to be received as your future husband.” 

“ I will scratch him ! ” exclaimed Barbe, with a 
flash of perverseness, at which her uncle’s cas- 
socked shoulders shook until he disappeared 
within doors. 

She left the earthwork and went to the 
entrance side of the fort. There she stood, 
whispering with a frown, — “Oh, if you please, 
monsieur, keep your distance ! Do not come 
here as any future husband of mine ! ” 

She had, however, much time in which to 
prepare her mind before Tonty appeared. 

All eyes on the Rock followed him. He shone 
through the trees, a splendid figure in the gold 
and white uniform of France, laid aside for years 
but resumed on this great occasion. 

When he came up to Barbe he stopped and 
folded his arms, saying whimsically, — 

“ Mademoiselle, I have not the experience to 
know how one should approach his betrothed. 
I never was married before.” 


A FETE ON- THE EOCH. 


203 


“ It is my case, also, monsieur,” replied Barbe. 

“How do you like Fort St. Louis?” pro- 
ceeded Tonty. 

“ I am enchanted with it.” 

“ You delight me when you say that. Dur- 
ing the last four years I have not made an 
improvement about the land or in any way 
strengthened this position without thinking, 
Mademoiselle Cavelier may sometime approve 
of this. We are finding a new way of heating 
our houses with underground flues made of 
stone and mortar.” 

“ That must be agreeable, monsieur.” 

“We often have hunting parties from the Rock. 
This country is full of game.” 

“ It is pleasant to amuse one’s self, monsieur.” 

Tonty had many a time seen the silent court- 
ship of the Illinois. He thought now of those 
motionless figures sitting side by side under a 
shelter of rushes or bark from morning till night 
without exchanging a word. 

“ Mademoiselle, I hope this marriage is agree- 
able to you ? ” 

“ Monsieur de Tonty,” exclaimed Barbe, “ I 
have simply been flung at your head to suit the 
convenience of my relatives.” 


204 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


“ Was that distasteful to you ? ” he wistfully 
inquired. 

“ I am not fit for a bride. No preparation 
has been made for me.” 

“ I thought of making some preparation my- 
self,” confessed Tonty. “ I got a web of bro- 
caded silk from France several years ago.” 

“ To be clothed like a princess by one’s bride- 
groom,” said Barbe, wringing her gown skirt and 
twisting folds of it in her fingers. “ That might 
be submitted to. But I could not wear the web 
of brocade around me like a blanket.” 

“ There are fifty needlewomen on the Rock 
who can make it in a day, mademoiselle.” 

“ And in short, monsieur, to be betrothed ir^ 
the morning and married the same day is what 
no girl will submit to ! ” 

Tonty, in the prime of his manhood and his 
might as a lover was too imposing a figure for 
her to face ; she missed seeing his swarthy pallor 
as he answered, — 

** I understand from all this, mademoiselle, 
that you care nothing for me. I have felt be- 
trothed to you ever since I declared myself to 
Monsieur de la Salle at Fort Frontenac. How 
your pretty dreaming of the Rock of St. Louis 


A FETE ON THE ROCK. 


205 


and your homesick cry for this place did pierce 
me! I said, ‘She shall be my wife, and I will 
bring home everything that can be obtained for 
her. That small face shall be heart’s treasure 
to me. Its eyes will watch for me over the 
Rock.’ On our journey here, many a night I 
took my blanket and lay beside your tent, 
thanking the saints for the sweet privilege of 
bringing home my bride. Mademoiselle,” said 
Tonty, trembling, “ I will kill any other man 
who dares approach you. Yet, mademoiselle, I 
could not annoy you by the least grief! Oh, 
teach a frontiersman what to say to please a 
woman ! ” 

“ Monsieur de Tonty,” panted Barbe. “ You 
please me too well, indeed ! It was necessary to 
come to an understanding. You should not 
make me say, — for I am ashamed to tell, — 
how long I have adored you ! ” 

As Tonty’s quick Italian blood mounted from 
extreme anguish to extreme rapture, he laughed 
with a sob. 

Fifty needlewomen on the Rock made in a 
day a gown of the web of brocaded silk. The 
fortress was full of preparation for evening fes- 
tivity. Hunters went out and brought in game. 


206 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


and Indians carried up fish, new corn, and honey 
from wild bee trees. All the tables which the 
dwellings afforded were ranged in two rows at 
opposite sides of the place of arms, and deco- 
rated with festoons of ferns and cedar, and sucli 
late flowers as exploring children could find. 

Some urchins ascended the Rock with an offer- 
ing of thick-lobed prickly cactus which grew 
plentifully in the sand. The Demoiselle Belle- 
fontaine labored from place to place, helping her 
husband to make this the most celebrated fete 
ever attempted in Fort St. Louis. 

As twilight settled — and it slowly settled — 
on the summit, roast venison, buffalo steaks, and 
the odor of innumerable dishes scented the air. 
Many candles pinned to the branches of trees 
like vast candelabra, glittered through the dusk. 
Crows sat on the rocks below and gabbled of the 
corn they had that day stolen from lazy Indian 
women. 

There was no need of chapel or bell in a 
temple fortress. All the inhabitants of the Rock 
stood as witnesses. Colin brought Barbe from 
the dwelling with the greater part of the web 
of brocaded silk dragged in grandeur behind 
her. Tonty kissed her hand and led her before 


207 


A fAte on the rock. 

the priests. When the ceremony a salute 

was fired. 

The Illinois town could hear singing on the 
Rock and see that stronghold glittering as if it 
had been carried by torches. Music of violin 
and horn, laughter dancing, and gay voices in 
repartee sounded on there through half the hours 
of the night. 


V 


THE UNDESPAIRING NORMAN. 

HE morning star yet shone and the river 



valley was drenched with half frosty dew, 
and filled with silver mist when the Abbe Cave- 
lier and his party descended to their canoes and 
set off up the river. They had made their fare- 
wells the night before, but Tonty and Greysolon 
du Lhut appeared, Tonty accompanying them 
down the descent. He came up with a bound 
before the boat was off, thundered at Bellefon- 
taine’s door, and pulled that sleepy officer into 
the open air, calling at his ear, — 

What fellow is this in the Abbe’s party who 
kept out of my sight until he carried his load but 
now to the canoe? ” 

“ You must mean Teissier, Monsieur de Tonty. 
He has lain ailing in the storehouse.” 

** Look, — yonder he goes.” 

Tonty made Bellefontaine lean over the eastern 
earthwork, but even the boat was blurred upon 
the river. 


THE UNDESPAIRING NORMAN. 


209 


** That was Jolycoeur,” declared Tonty, “whom 
Monsieur de la Salle promised me he would 
never take into his service again. That fellow 
tried to poison Monsieur de la Salle at Fort 
Frontenac.” 

“ Monsieur de Tonty,” remonstrated the sub- 
ordinate, “ I know him well. He was here a 
month. He told me he was enlisted at St. 
Domingo, while Monsieur de la Salle lay in a 
fever, to replace men who deserted. He is a 
pilot and his name is Teissier.” 

“ Whatever his real name may be we had him 
here on the Rock before you came, and he was 
called Jolycoeur.” 

“ At any rate,” said Du Lhut, “ his being of 
Abbe Cavelier’s company argues that he hath 
done La Salle no late harm.’' 

Tonty thought about the matter while light 
grew in the sky, but dismissed it when the priest 
of Fort St. Louis summoned his great family to 
matins. On such pleasant mornings they were 
chanted in the open air. 

The sun rose, drawing filaments from the mass 
of vapor like a spinner, and every shred disap- 
peared while the eye watched it. Preparations 

went forward for breakfast, while children’s and 
14 


210 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


birds voices already chirped above and below 
the steep ascent. 

One urchin brought Tonty a paper, saying it 
was Monsieur Joutel’s, the young man who slept 
in the storehouse and was that morning gone 
from the fort. 

“ Did he tell you to give it to me?” inquired 
Tonty. 

“Monsieur,” complained the lad, “he pinned 
it in the cap of my large brother and left order 
it was to be given to you after two days. But 
my large brother hath this morning pinned it 
in my cap, and it may work me harm. Besides, 
I desire to amuse myself by the river, and if 
I lost Monsieur Joutel’s paper I should get 
whipped.” 

“ I commend you,” laughed Tonty, as he took 
the packet. “ You must have no secrets from 
your commandant.” 

The child leaped, relieved, toward the gate, and 
this heavy communication shook between the 
iron and the natural hand. Tonty spread it 
open on his right gauntlet. 

He read a few moments with darkening coun- 
tenance. Then the busy people on the Rock 
were startled by a cry of awful anguish. Tonty 


THE UNDESPAIRJNG NORMAN. 


21 


rushed to the centre of the esplanade, flinging 
the paper from him, and shouted, “Du Lhut — 
men of Fort St. Louis ! Monsieur de la Salle 
has been murdered in that southern wilderness ! 



Tonty spread it open on his gauntlet. 


We have had one of the assassins hiding here in 
our storehouse ! Get out the boats ! '' 

Men and women paused in their various 
business, and children, like frightened sheep, 


212 


THE STORY OF TONTY, 


gathered closely around their mothers. The 
clamorous cry which disaster wrings from ex- 
citable Latins burst out in every part of the 
fortress. Du Lhut grasped the paper and read 
it while he limped after Tonty. 

With up-spread arms the Italian raved across 
the open space, this far-reaching calamity widen- 
ing like an eternally expanding circle around 
him. His rage at the assassins of La Salle — 
among whom he had himself placed a man 
whom he thought fit to be trusted — and his 
.sorrow broke bounds in such sobs as men utter. 

“ Oh, that I might brain them with this hand ! 
Oh, wretched people on these plains ! What 
hope remains to us? What will become of all 
these families, whose resource he was, whose 
sole consolation ! It is despair for us ! Thou 
wert one of the greatest men of this age, — so 
useful to France by thy great discoveries, so 
strong in thy virtues, so respected, so cherished 
by people even the most barbarous. That such 
a man should be massacred by wretches, and 
the earth did not engulf them or the lightning 
strike them dead ! ” ^ 

1 Translated from Tonty’s lament over La Salle in “ Dernieres 
Decouvertes dans L’Amerique Septentrional.” 


THE UNDESPAJRING NORMAN. 


213 


Tonty’s blood boiled in his face. 

“Why do you all stand here like rocks in- 
stead of getting out the boats? Get out the 
boats! They stripped my master; they left his 
naked body to wolves and crows on Trinity 
River. Get ready the canoes. I will hunt 
those assassins, down to the last man, through 
every forest on this continent ! ” 

“You did not finish this relation,”^ shouted 

1 Joutel’s Journal gives a long and exact account of La Salle’s 
assassination and the fate of all who were concerned in it. The 
murder, by the conspirators, of his nephew Moranget, his servant 
Saget, and his Indian hunter Nika — w’hich preceded and led 
to his death — is not mentioned in this romance. 

To this day it is not certainly known what became of La Salle’s 
body. Father Anastase Douay, the Recollect priest who wit- 
nessed his death, told Joutel at the time that the conspirators 
stripped it and threw it in the bushes. But afterward he de- 
clared La Salle lived an hour, and he himself confessed the 
dying man, buried him when dead, and planted a cross on his 
grave. So excellent a historian as Garneau gives credit to this 
story. 

In reality the Abbe Cavelier and his party treated Tonty with 
greater cruelty than the romancer describes. They lived over 
winter on his hospitality, departed loaded wdth his favors, and 
told him not a word of the tragedy. 

Joutel’s account of it, much condensed from the old English 
translation, reads thus : — 

“ The ■ conspirators hearing the shot (fired by La Salle to attract 
their attention) concluded it was Monsieur de la Sale who was come to 
seek them. They made ready their arms and Duhaut passed the river 


214 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


Du Lhut at his ear. “ Can you get revenge 
on dead men? The men who actually put 
their hands in the blood of La Salle are all 
dead. Those who killed not each other the 
Indians killed.” 

with Larchaveqiie. The first of them spying Monsieur de la Sale at 
a Distance, as he was coming towards them, advanced and hid himself 
among the high weeds, to wait his passing by, so that Monsieur de la 
Sale suspected nothing, and having not so much as charged his Piece 
again, saw the aforesaid Larcheveque at a good distance from him, and 
immediately asked for his nephew Moranget, to which Larcheveque 
answered. That he was along the river. At the same time the Traitor 
Duhaut fired his Piece and shot Monsieur de la Sale thro’ the head, so 
that he dropped down dead on the Spot, without speaking one word. 

“ Father Anastase, who was then by his side, stood stock still in a 
Fright, expecting the same fate, . . . but the murderer Duhaut put 
him out of that Dread, bidding him not to fear, for no hurt was intended 
him ; that it was Dispair that had prevailed with them to do what he 
saw. . . . 

“ The shot which had killed Monsieur de la Sale was a signal . . . 
for the assassins to draw near. They all repaired to the place where 
the wretched corpse lay, which they barbarously stripped to the shirt, 
and vented their malice in opprobrious language. The surgeon Liotot 
said several times in scorn and derision, There thou liest, Great Bassa, 
there thou liest. In conclusion they dragged it naked among the bushes 
and left it exposed to the ravenous wild Beasts. 

“ When they came to our camp . . . Monsieur Cavelier the priest 
could not forbear telling them that if they would do the same by him he 
would forgive them his ” (La Salle’s) “ murder. . . . They answered 
they had Nothing to say to him. 

. . . “We were all obliged to stifle our Resentment that it might not 
appear, for our Lives depended upon it. ... We dissembled so well 
that they were not suspicious of us, and that Temptation we were under 
of making them away in revenge for those they had murdered, would 
have easily prevailed and been put in execution, had not Monsieur 


THE UNDESPAIRING NORMAN. 2 15 

Tonty turned with a furious push at Du Lhut 
which sent him staggering backward. 

“Is Jolycoeur dead? I will run down this 
forgiving priest of a brother of Monsieur de la 
Salle’s, and the assassin he harbored here under 
his protection he shall give up to justice!” 

“ Thou mad-blooded loyal-hearted Italian 1 ” 
exclaimed Du Lhut, dragging him out of the 
throng and holding him against a tree, “ dost 
thou think nobody can feel this wrong except 
thee? I would go with thee anywhere if it 
could be revenged. But hearken to me, Henri 
de Tonty; if you go after the Abbe it will 
appear that you wish to strip him of the goods 
he bore away.” 

“ He brought an order from Monsieur de la 
Salle,” retorted Tonty. “ On that order I would 
give him the last skin in the storehouse. What 
I will strip him of is the wretch he carries in 
his forgiving bosom ! ” 

“ And you will put a scandal upon this young 

Cavelier, the Priest, always positively opposed it, alleging that we ought 
to leave vengeance to God.” 

The Recollet priest, who had seen La Salle’s death, answered 
no questions at Fort St. Louis. Teissier, one of the conspira- 
tors, had obtained the Abbe’s pardon. The others could truly 
say La Salle was well when they last saw him. 


2i6 


THE STORY OF TON TV. 


girl your bride, who has this sorrow also to 
bear. Are you determined to denounce her 
uncle and her brother before this fortress as 
unworthy to be the kinsmen of La Salle? She 
has now no consolation left except in you. 
Will you burn the wound of her sorrow with 
the brand of shame?” 

Tonty leaned against the tree, pallor suc- 
ceeding the pulsing of blood in his face. He 
looked at Du Lhut with piteous black eyes, 
like a stag brought down in full career. 

“ The Abbe Cavelier,” Bellefontaine was whis- 
pering to one of the immigrants, “ carried from 
this fortress above four thousand livres worth 
of furs, besides other goods ! ” 

“And left mademoiselle married without for- 
tune,” muttered back the other. “ He did well 
for himself by concealing the death of Sieur 
de la Salle.” 

Men and women looked mournfully at each 
other as Tonty walked across the fort and shut 
himself in his house. They wondered at hear- 
ing no crying within it such as a woman might 
utter upon the first shock of her grief. With 
La Salle’s own instinct Barbe locked herself 
within her room. It was not known to the 


THE UNDESPAIRING NORMAN 2 1 / 

people of Fort St. Louis, it was not known 
even to Tonty, how she lay on the floor with 
her teeth set and faced this fact. 

Tonty sat in his door overlooking the cliff all 
day. 

Clouds sailed over the Rock. The lingering 
robins quarrelled with crows. That glittering 
pinnacled cliff across the ravine shone like white 
castle turrets. Smoke went up from the lodges 
on the plains as it had done during the six months 
La Salle’s bones were bleaching on Trinity 
River; but now a whisper like the whisper 
of wind in September corn-leaves was rushing 
from lodge to lodge. Tonty heard tribe after 
tribe take up the lament for the dead. 

Not only was it a lament for La Salle ; but it 
was also for their own homes. He and Tonty 
had brought them back from exile, had banded 
them for strength and helped them ward off the 
Iroquois. His unstinted success meant their 
greatest prosperity. The undespairing Norman’s 
death foreshadowed theirs, with all that silence 
and desolation which must fall on the Rock of 
St. Louis before another civilization possessed it. 

Night came, and the leaves sifted down in its 
light breeze as if only half inclined to their 


2i8 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


descent. The children had been quieted all day. 
To them the revelry of the night before seemed 
a far remote occasion, so instantly are joy and 
trouble set asunder. 

The rich valley of the Illinois grew dimmer 
and dimmer under the starlight Tonty could 
no longer see the river’s brown surface, but he 
could distinguish the little trail of foam down its 
centre churned by rapids above. Twisted pines, 
which had tangled their roots in everlasting rock, 
hung below him, children of the air. Some man 
of the garrison approached the windlass and let 
down the bucket with creak and rattle. He 
waited with the ear of custom for its clanking 
cry as it plunged, its gurgle and struggle in 
the water, and the many splashes with which it 
ascended. 

His face showed as a pale spot in the dusk 
when he rose from the doorstep and came into 
the room to light a candle. Barbe must be 
brought out from her silent ordeal and comforted 
and fed. 

Tonty set his lighted candle on a table and 
considered how he should approach her door. 
The furniture of the room had been hastily 
carried in that morning from its uses in the fete. 


THE UNDESPAIRJNG NORMAN. 


219 



The apartment was a rude frontier drawing- 
room, having furs, deer antlers, and shining 
canoe paddles for its ornaments. 

While Tonty hesitated, the door on the for- 
tress side opened, and La Salle stepped into the 
room. 


It was La Salle. 

Tonty’s voice died in his throat. The joy and 
terror of this sight held him without power to 
move. 

It was La Salle ; a mere shred of his former 
person, girt like some skeleton apostle with a 
buffalo hide which left his arm bones naked as 
well as his journey roughened feet. Beard had 


220 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


started through his pallid skin, and this and his 
wild hair the wilderness had dressed with dead 
leaves. A piece of buffalo leather banded his 
forehead like a coarse crown, yet blood had 
escaped its pressure, for a dried track showed 
darkly down the side of his neck. Tonty gave 
no thought to the manitou of a waterfall from 
whose shrine La Salle had probably stripped 
that Indian offering of a buffalo robe. It did not 
seem to him incredible that Robert Cavelier 
should survive what other men called a death 
wound, and naked, bleeding, and starving, should 
make his way -for six months through jungles of 
forest, to his friend. 

Hoarse and strong from the depths of his 
breast Tonty brought out the cry, — 

O my master, my master ! 

“ Tonty,” spoke La Salle, standing still, with 
the rapture of achievement in his eyes, “ I have 
found the lost river ! ” 

He moved across the room and went out of 
the cliff door. His gaunt limbs and shaggy robe 
were seen one instant against the palisades, as if 
his eye were passing that starlit valley in review, 
the picture in miniature of the great west. He 
was gone while Tonty looked at him. 


THE UNDESPAIRING NORMAN. 


22 


The whisper of water at the base of the rock, 
and of the sea’s sweet song in pines, took the 
place of the voice which had spoken. 

A lad began to carol within the fortress, but 
hushed himself with sudden remembrance. That 
brooding body of darkness, which so overlies us 
all that its daily removal by sunlight is a con- 
tinued miracle, pressed around this silent room 
resisted only by one feeble candle. And Tonty 
stood motionless in the room, blanched and 
exalted by what he had seen. 

Barbe’s opening her chamber door startled him 
and set in motion the arrested machinery of life. 

“ What has been here, monsieur?” she asked 
under her breath. 

Tonty, without replying, moved to receive her, 
crushing under his foot a beech-nut which one of 
the children of the fortress had dropped upon 
the floor. Barbe’s arms girded his great chest. 

“ Oh, monsieur,” she said with a sob, “ I thought 
I heard a voice in this room, and I know I would 
myself break through death to come back to 


VI. 


TO-DAY. 

TT is recorded that the Abb6 Cavelier and his 
^ party arrived safely in France, and that he 
then concealed the death of La Salle for awhile 
that he might get possession of property which 
would have been seized by La Salle’s creditors. 
He died “ rich and very old ” says the historian, ^ 
though he was unsuccessful in a petition which 
he made with his nephew to the king, to have all 
the explorer’s seigniorial propriety in America 
put in his possession. Like Father Hennepin — 
who returned to France and wrote his entertain- 
ing book to prove himself a greater man than La 
Salle — the Abbe Cavelier was skilful in turning 
loss to profit. 

It is also recorded that Henri de Tonty, at his 
own expense, made a long search with men, 
canoes, and provisions, for La Salle’s Texan col- 
ony — left by the king to perish at the hands of 
J Parkman. 


TO-DA V. 


223 


Indians ; that he was deserted by every follower 
except his Indian and one Frenchman, and 
nearly died in swamps and canebrakes before he 
again reached the fort on the Illinois. 

To-day you may climb the Rock of St Louis, — 
called now Starved Rock from the last stand 
which the Illinois made as a tribe on that fortress, 
a hundred years ago, when the Iroquois sur- 
rounded and starved them, — and you may look 
over the valley from which Tonty heard the 
death lament arise. 

A later civilization has cleared it of Indian 
lodges and set it with villages and homesteads. 
A low ridge of the old earthwork yet remains on 
the east verge. Behind the Rock, slopes of milk- 
white sand still stretch toward a shallow ravine. 
Beyond that stands a farmhouse full of the relics 
of French days. The iron-handed commandant 
of the Rock has left some hint of his strong spirit 
thereabouts, for even the farmer’s boy will speak 
his name with the respect boys have for heroic 
men. 

Crosses, beads, old iron implements, and count- 
less remains of La Salle’s time, turn up every- 
where in the valley soil. 


224 


THE STORY OF TONTY. 


Ferns spring, lush and vivid, from the lichened 
lips of that great sandstone body. The stunted 
cedars lean over its edge still singing the music 
of the sea. Sunshine and shade and nearness to 
the sky are yet there. You see depressions in 
the soil like grass-healed wounds, made by the 
tearing out of huge trees ; but local tradition tells 
you these are the remains of pits dug down to the 
rock by Frenchmen searching for Tonty’s money. 
At the same time, local tradition is positive that 
Tonty came back, poor, to the Rock to die, in 1718. 

Death had stripped him of every tie. He had 
helped to build that city near the Mississippi’s 
mouth which was La Salle’s object, and had also 
helped found Mobile. The great west owes more 
to him than to any other man who labored to 
open it to the world. Yet historians say the date 
of his death is unknown, and tradition around the 
Rock says he crept up the stony path an old and 
broken man, helped by his Indian and a priest, 
died gazing from its summit, and was buried at 
its west side. The tribes, while they held the 
land, continued to cover his grave with wild 
roses. But men may tread over him now, for he 
lies lost in the earth as La Salle was lost in the 
wilderness of the south. 


TO-DA y. 


225 


No justice ever was done to this man who gave 
to his friends with both hand of flesh and hand 
of iron, caring nothing for recompense ; and 
whom historians, priests, tradition, savages, and 
his own deeds unite in praising. But as long as 
the friendship of man for man is beautiful, as 
long as the multitude with one impulse lift above 
themselves those men who best express the race, 
Henri de Tonty’s memory must stand like the 
Rock of St. Louis.^ 

1 “In 1690 the proprietorship of Fort St. Louis was granted 
to Tonty jointly with La Forest. ... In 1702 the governor of 
Canada, clainiing that the charter of the fort had been violated, 
decided to discontinue it. Although thus officially abandoned 
it seems to have been occupied as a trading post until 1718. 
Deprived of his command and property, Tonty engaged with Le, 
Moyne d’Iberville in various successful expeditions.” — John 
Moses’ History of Illinois. 


THE END. 









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